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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

No. 32 

Editors : 

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 
Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. 



' THE HOME UNIVERSITY! LIBRARY 
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THE SCHOOL: An Introduction 

to the Study of Education . . . By J. J. Findlay 

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PRACTICAL IDEALISM .... By Maurice Hewlett 

EDUCATION By J. J. Findlay 

ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL 

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AGRICULTURE By W. Somerville 



THE SCHOOL 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
STUDY OF EDUCATION 



BY 

f? J. FINDLAY 

M.A., PH.D. 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR OF "ARNOLD OF RUGBY," "PRINCIPLES 

OF CLASS TEACHING," ETC. 





NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

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Copyright, 191Z, 

BY 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



©CI.A312059 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

CHAP. 

I Origins 9 

II The Young of Man 21 

III The Rise of Educational Institutions ... 32 

IV The Function^of the School 43 

V Stages of Growth (or Development) ... 74 

VI The Organization of Education 100 

VII Types of School — with some Reference to 

Universities 139 

VIII The Teacher 167 

IX The Pursuits of School 195 

X The Corporate Life of School 231 

BlBLIOGRArHY 249 

Index 253 



PREFACE 

I am grateful to the American publishers of this 
volume for affording me space to write a word of 
greeting to my many friends among teachers in the 
United States. More than one of these chapters 
(as well as the bibliography) testify to the help my 
mind has received from the writings of my confreres 
over the water, and from the visits I have made to 
colleges and schools in the United States during the 
last twenty years. I believe that, while in other 
branches of science the old countries have advanta- 
ges over the new, simply because we are old, the 
case is reversed as regards pedagogy. The reader 
will readily discover the grounds for this opinion if 
he peruse Chapter V. I have, therefore, in writing 
this book, always had in mind readers in the New 
World as much as readers in the Old World. And 
in the United States, especially, where the formal 
study of Education has spread with such extraordinary 
rapidity since the 'nineties, I am convinced that 
teachers are ready for such a systematic presentment 
of our professional work as is attempted in these 
chapters. I have tried to kill two birds with one 
stone. On the one hand, I have sought to weld the 
' vii 



viii PREFACE 

whole exposition into one body of thought, for that is 
what the student needs ; whether he be rural teacher 
or a University student, he must see the whole in its 
parts. On the other hand, I have tried to discuss a 
large number of current topics in a way that shall 
interest the citizen — the man who cares for public 
education from the outside and wants to know what 
the schools are after. 

Naturally, in the selection of illustrations I have 
referred in the first instance to the condition of things 
in England, but not wholly, for I have repeatedly found 
that an American example would help to illuminate 
my point. Nor will the discussion of English prob- 
lems be regarded as out of place by my American 
readers, for I well know their eagerness to make 
comparative studies and to secure a firmer basis for 
educational principles by witnessing their operation 
in another hemisphere. 

J. J. F. 



THE SCHOOL 

CHAPTER I 

ORIGINS 

1. There is a curious contradiction in the 
attitude that we adopt towards education. 
No subject bores us more when we are in the 
mood for being bored; every one can talk 
about it, for children, like the poor, are always 
with us; but how seldom is anything new 
discovered, or even anything old propounded 
in a novel way. 

But in other moods the theme is of en- 
grossing interest and of supreme importance. 
The philosophers, who differ in everything 
else, agree in maintaining that the progress of 
mankind depends upon education; and the 
fond mother, looking at her baby's features 
in the cradle, agrees with the philosopher. 

For, defined in the broadest terms, educa- 
tion is no more and no less than the pro- 
vision that mankind has to make for the 
progress of the species to which he belongs, 
i. e. civilized man. There are many more 
lofty conceptions of education, but they are 

9 



10 THE SCHOOL 

liable to error if they neglect this lowly 
starting-point and fail to treat our species 
according to its rank with other animal 
species. The conditions under which the 
human breed has survived and made prog- 
ress are, in fact, more patently in evidence 
with us than with other animals, for man 
finds himself able to adapt himself to new 
situations with extraordinary facility. He 
will take on a new habit, acquire fresh quali- 
ties, flit to a foreign climate, anticipate peril, 
discover wants, adapt himself to a novel en- 
vironment, — or rather, as we shall see, compel 
environment to adapt itself to his demands, 
— and thus prove himself fit to meet, and 
to master, the pitiless circumstances under 
which creation lives and breeds and dies. 

Now all the plans which man devises for 
these ends are, in the nature of things, de- 
vised for the young; it is they who are the 
species, who enable it to go on. The funda- 
mental instinct in all organic beings is that 
of caring for succession, and the fundamental 
laws of life are those concerned with trans- 
mission to offspring. The brute, by instinct, 
trains his young to seize the prey, to flee from 
danger, to hunt for food; and the young of 
bird and beast, by instinct, will imitate, 
practise, and, if successful, survive. Thus the 
first, common-sense — if you like, the brutal — 



ORIGINS 11 

account of schooling explains it as a neces- 
sary effort to equip the child for the duties 
which lie before him. He must keep the ball 
rolling: adaptation and progress are part of 
the inevitable scheme. True enough, man 
has become so clever that he sometimes asks 
in pessimistic mood, "Is life worth living?" 
but the answer comes sharply enough from 
the biologist: "Yes, it is worth living — to 
those who are fit for survival ! " Mankind as 
a whole cherishes the race; its love for its 
young far exceeds that of other animals: the 
mother endures with fortitude the labour of 
bearing them, and the father shares with her 
the daily sacrifice involved in their upbring- 
ing; schooling must start, and does start in 
the simply truthful mind of the common 
people, as the latest example of the primary 
instincts which we share with wolves and 
bears. It is needed now by every English 
child in a way that it was not needed a hun- 
dred years ago, for the race has developed new 
needs, and the girl or boy who cannot read or 
write will starve — not, perhaps, literally go 
without food, but in the larger sense, man and 
his breed will not "survive," if they neglect 
schooling. It may be true that slum families 
multiply faster than suburban families, but 
the law of the survival of the fittest goes be- 
yond a mere counting of heads; if need arose 



12 THE SCHOOL 

the strong stocks would kill off the weaker 
somehow. 

The present writer met a young navvy 
recently who was attending a night school; 
the man had a wife and two children, and 
found that he wanted higher wages. He said 
that no labourer in his gang was able to write 
more than his name; if he could learn to read 
and write decently he would at once take a 
higher position, as a foreman. He was asked 
whether he had not been to the elementary 
school; yes, he had attended up to the age of 
ten; by that time he had learned his cate- 
chism and he was then sent to frighten crows 
from the farmer's crops. 

This is not to say that, as a matter of course, 
our epoch is nobler or better than the world 
of earlier days: the fact that you and I have 
been to school or college does not make us 
finer folk than our grandmothers: it means 
that, as things now stand, schooling is a new 
want that, within limits, has to be supplied. 
A similar situation is presented in the animal 
world: we have made the cat a domestic 
creature, and hence if we turn a kitten loose 
in the fields it cannot survive. There are 
many districts abroad, and a few in England, 
where a cat can go into the woods and live 
on birds, rabbits, and mice, until it is shot 
by the gamekeeper; but, on the whole, this 



ORIGINS 13 

artificial civilized environment having been 
created, the young of the species must share 
the environment or disappear. 

2. We see, then, that while man is de- 
pendent upon schooling, most animals are 
dependent upon instinctive reactions for 
their adjustment to environment. "Such 
animals are not able to apply experience 
to the improvement of adjustment, and are 
consequently not amenable to the influences 
of education." Thus, what we have called 
"education" is not so much an extra benefit 
conferred on man as a fundamental character- 
istic of the race: the animal remains animal, 
remains the species lobster, worm, or ape, 
because he cannot be educated. 

Sometimes one finds the control to which 
man subjects some of the higher animals de- 
scribed as "education": but this is a loose 
mode of speech. Man can "train" many 
animals to respond to stimuli, to answer his 
commands; and by artificial selection and 
elimination he can improve a breed. Indeed, 
some anxious observers of human develop- 
ment would like to see similar plans of control 
adopted by man for the human breed itself; 
but, whatever value is thought to attach to 
such methods, they are clearly apart from 
the modes of progress indicated by the term 
"education." 



14 THE SCHOOL 

Man is, indeed, so powerfully impressed by 
his superiority over the brute as to be only 
too inclined to forget the pit whence he was 
digged. Until recently the psychologists were 
willing to leave folk in ignorance, comforting 
us with the fond delusion that we are gods 
endowed with reason, in contrast to the brutes 
who live by instinct. Now we know that 
we are both: that we have more instincts 
than they: that we, as they, accept readily 
the dominion of habit; and with them fall 
under the paramount law — we, too, appear 
as an organism adapted to its environment. 
But the environment is infinitely complex, 
and the organism, in most baffling and intri- 
cate fashion, is adapted not only to meet its 
environment, but to study it, to get behind 
it, to conquer it. The human creature, with 
his self-consciousness, his speech, his ideals, 
is at once the most splendid illustration and 
the most dazzling contradiction in modern 
science. 

Compare him with his dog. The dog, too, 
has an ideal: — selected by his masters, he 
finds his highest end for life in affectionate 
loyalty; apart from this, all he is concerned 
with is the satisfaction of the primitive sen- 
sual instincts of hunger, sleep, sex, and hunt- 
ing. No doubt satisfaction comes also from 
novelty in perceptual experience, but this 



ORIGINS 15 

leads to nothing, and the dog abides on his 
lower level of mental activity. 

Thus man has risen, it would appear, to 
his higher levels by two stages : first of all, he 
is found able to profit by past experience; 
secondly, he has immensely advanced in 
means of communicating experience, utilizing 
the experience of the best for the common 
good. Above all, this tool of speech has served 
the purposes of education, for it is by com~ 
municating to offspring that man contrives to 
secure the advance of his race. Here, again, 
there are faint analogies in the animal world. 
All beings are equally concerned with man in 
helping their young to survive, and certainly 
the higher types find means to transmit 
experience. The Jungle Book portrays bear, 
python, wolf, behaving like comrades, each 
handing to the other the forest lore. We do 
not, however, read Kipling for scientific pur- 
poses; the training that the wolf gives to the 
baby wolf is instinctive and is transmitted 
from generation to generation on a model that 
varies little, if at all; it is only in the human 
species that we find such a memory and a 
mode of communication as enables experience 
to supplement instinct with any effect. 

It is of importance to observe that this 
supplementing of an instinct often involves 
its suppression. We have already noted that 



16 THE SCHOOL 

man is a creature of instinct, 1 but lie makes "a 
man of himself" by thwarting their power, 
by controlling their sway, by letting many of 
them atrophy for want of use. When man 
was a tree-dweller he cultivated the instinct 
of clinging with his toes — he had derived it 
from his progenitor the ape: our children still 
possess the instinct, although it is weakened 
— but we let it become atrophied — there are 
no branches to cling to; or we inhibit it with 
socks and shoes. 

Now these variations in the human breed 
are all concerned with tendencies and powers 
which spring from our general gift of recording 
and communicating experience. When we 
study the variations in a breed of animals, we 
commonly think of physical characteristics; 
the size of cattle or poultry, the strength or 
wind of a horse. But the striking fact 
about man is that he seems only to be 
concerned, as a race, with mental progress; 
in body there has been little change, and 
this chiefly concerns the size of the brain as 
organ of mind. This is not to say that in the 
care of the young we can afford to neglect the 
body; when we find education treating the 
body with contempt we witness a most ex- 

1 These comparisons between man and animals must only 
be taken in general terms. For more precise statements, 
comparative psychologists such as Lloyd Morgan should 
be consulted. 



ORIGINS 17 

traordinary example of perversion. With man 
the body is essential because it is the servant 
of the mind, and renders indispensable serv- 
ice. A complete definition of education gives 
a due place to this consideration, which will 
claim our attention again in Chap. IV. 

Nor can the human being be properly de- 
scribed apart from his equipment of intelli- 
gence, of emotions, of desires, of ideals — as 
well as of positive knowledge, or concrete 
experience. We are often inclined to discuss 
"progress" in terms of great discoveries and 
inventions — Americas and steam-engines; but 
these things are not progress : it is in the mind 
of man that they are found, and by man they 
are utilized. If he were deprived of them he 
could recover them. The educative process, 
contemplated in the large sense, is the road 
by which all these experiences and powers get 
transmitted — and transmuted — as one gener- 
ation succeeds the other. From Tree-Dweller 
to Air-Man the story is the same : races have 
struggled, triumphed, multiplied, decayed, 
and all along have so acted because they have 
been able — or finally unable — to communicate 
experience and adapt it to new situations. 

3. It will be noticed that we have by im- 
plication admitted one feature of human 
struggle and progress shared by man with 
most animals — but displayed by him to a sur- 



18 THE SCHOOL 

passing extent. Man is a social being, i. e. he 
lives with his fellows in packs, or herds, or 
hives; he not only transmits experience to his 
own young, but he recognizes kinship with his 
fellows: his progress is theirs: their achieve- 
ment is shared by him. True, there is strug- 
gle within the breed, but there is also mutual 
aid; hence, among the young, a large part of 
education consists of social contacts: the 
child learns by interchange with his kind, 
and more especially by contact with those of 
his own age and range of experience. This 
point needs all the more to be emphasized 
because it is so often ignored both in theories 
of education and in school practice. What- 
ever may be said in abstract treatises as to 
the formation of character or the unfolding of 
mental powers, all such results are conditioned 
by an ebb and flow of those social relationships 
which make so large a part of daily experience 
and claim so often the focus of attention. 
Man cannot conceive of himself apart from his 
kind, and the teacher or parent who studies 
the child as a separate unit makes little prog- 
ress in the art of education. We therefore de- 
vote the concluding chapter of this volume to 
a discussion of school in its corporate aspect. 

4. We have sought thus far to explain 
education by the aid of biology, but it has 
already become clear that there is much in 



ORIGINS 19 

the situation for which our parallels with 
animal life will not account. "Progress" is 
a useful term in debate, but it may disguise 
confusion of thought. The story of the past, 
in general terms, is clear; but what of the 
future? Whither are we tending? 

The great mass of the human race, now as 
ever, are dominated by the imperative in- 
stincts of the body: the child, like other 
animals, begins to share in the battle for 
existence as soon as its frame acquires suffi- 
cient strength. Among all the lowest types, 
whether penned in city slums or roaming in 
savage wilds, this struggle precludes atten- 
tion to higher wants: animal impulses assert 
under such conditions their fullest sway. 
But even at these low levels man finds that 
there is a life beyond mere living: among the 
most degraded tribes we hear of the domestic 
rites of religion, ceremonies that surround the 
central crises of life and death: there is crude 
music and dancing: the heroic deeds of by- 
gone days are told once and again. Some- 
how, after countless ages of evolution, man 
found — himself: in some mysterious crisis he 
took that step towards the light which cut 
him adrift from the brute and made him — 
man, a being conscious not only of a re- 
membered past, but of an idealized future, 
conscious not only of new wants, but of 



20 THE SCHOOL 

duties. Man becomes man when he frames 
the question, What am I? 

It is at this point that the conception 
of formal education emerges, as an abiding 
element in human progress. Among savage 
tribes little distinctive provision is made to 
enable the young to share the experience of 
the elders; they share in the common life, and 
are present, it may be, when the rites of the 
tribe are performed, greedy with eyes and 
ears to watch and imitate: but it needs a 
further step before men undertake the act 
which is specifically called Education. Some 
father has a clearer vision than his fellows : in 
the face of his growing boy he sees the man 
who shall take his place and office: so with 
pains he imparts the scanty tradition, hands 
on the expiring flame. In the rare moments 
of relief from toil he summons his children and 
"teaches diligently" the statutes, the judg- 
ments, the story, and the song. In its best 
and truest sense education has always been 
concerned with ideals; for life is more than 
meat. Comparative biology cannot define the 
province of the teacher simply because human 
aspiration, faith, and fear stand apart from the 
physical life. This aspect of our subject, which 
brings ethics into relation with education, will 
require our attention below when we consider 
the function of the School (Chap. IV). 



CHAPTER II 

THE YOUNG OF MAN 

1. It will be noticed that we have made a 
distinction between the scope of the terms 
"education" and "schooling." By "school- 
ing" we mean the educational provision made 
for the young, for the rising generation, which 
is unable by its own efforts to survive and 
progress. "Education," unfortunately, is used 
in a double sense. We speak vaguely of being 
"educated" by books, by society, by travel 
at all periods of life, whereas in legislation 
and politics the term is confined to the defi- 
nite requirements of non-adults. Both ani- 
mals and mankind are influenced throughout 
life by environment, but this lies apart from 
the specific effort made to enable the adult 
and mature society to foster the immature and 
helpless. Many adults, it is true, seek oppor- 
tunities for self -culture, for the enlargement of 
experience, for the satisfaction of the intellec- 
tual life, but these efforts, though commonly 
described as "educative," and though playing 

a great part in human progress, are of a 

21 



22 THE SCHOOL 

different order from deliberate plans by which 
the young are afforded similar opportunities 
and experience. If, therefore, we employ the 
term "education" at all in these chapters, 
it will be only in the restricted sense as 
equivalent to schooling. 

It must be borne in mind that we cannot 
draw any hard and fast line as to the stage 
in the development of any individual at 
which he can be properly regarded as able 
to "stand on his own feet." Physical changes 
certainly offer preliminary conditions; the 
stage of childhood is marked off from that of 
adolescence, and one difference between the 
child, as contrasted with the boy or girl, is 
that the former feels his helplessness, while 
healthy boys and girls are distinguished by 
a craving for independence. But the latter, 
in the eyes of adult wisdom, are still helpless, 
needing both direction and control. 

2. Our analogies with the animal world will 
here be of service again; for progress of a 
species in one direction is accompanied by an 
appearance of loss in another. The animal 
relying on his instincts and profiting by expe- 
rience quickly learns to help himself, but the 
young of man is artificially protected and 
guided, so that he is comparatively "helpless" 
for a longer period. The biologist points 
out the law working in the ascending scale of 



THE YOUNG OF MAN 23 

animal life: the higher the type, the longer 
is the period of dependence upon parents. 
The chick begins to peck as soon as he is on 
his feet, but the young of mammals cannot 
find release so soon. Now the sociologist 
observes a similar law in the progress of the 
human species: every advance in civilization, 
whether in a nation or in a single family, 
carries with it "an extension of the period of 
infancy," i. e. of the time during which the 
offspring is regarded, either by the nation or 
by the parents, as unfit to forage for himself. 
"The meaning of that period of helplessness 
or infancy, as I see it, lies at the bottom of 
any scientific or philosophic understanding of 
the part played by education in human life." * 
By elaborating the machinery of modern life 
we make the process of adjustment to en- 
vironment more complex with every genera- 
tion; and not only is the length of "infancy" 
extended, but the helplessness of the infant 
during that period is increased on a similar 
scale. Servants, nurses, governesses, all have 
the effect of keeping the young from domestic 
experience, with the idea that helplessness, as 
regards primitive economic needs, may give 
scope for greater ultimate efficiency, in adjust- 
ment to a society where knowledge and social 
experience play their part. In an earlier day, 

1 N. M. Butler: The Meaning of Education. 



24 THE SCHOOL 

when practical experience was regarded as of 
greater moment, both the page at the court and 
the apprentice in the workshop were trained 
to be of immediate service to their elders. 

Perhaps, however, the most evident exam- 
ple of the working of this law of the exten- 
sion of the period of infancy is shown in the 
elaboration of professional training. In every 
university we notice the contrasted attitude 
of the older generation and the new; the older 
men look with regret on the days when a 
student could begin to earn his living in 
medicine, or engineering, or the Church, at 
twenty-two; the younger men insist that a 
lad is not given a fair chance if you expect 
him to reap the fruits of study before twenty- 
five. Indeed, President Butler lays it down 
as an accepted dictum "that the length of 
time that it takes for the human child in this 
generation to adapt himself to his surround- 
ings so as to be able to succeed in them, to 
conquer them, and to make them his own, 
is almost, if not quite, thirty years." We are 
bound to admit that for the best minds in 
all the higher walks of life the extension to 
thirty years is justified; but surely it is very 
wide of the mark to generalize as to "the 
human child" of every type. For while it 
is true that the environment to which we need 
to become adjusted grows more complex with 



THE YOUNG OF MAN 25 

every decade, it is not true that every indi- 
vidual is equally plastic and adjustable. The 
best engineers and physicians will no doubt 
benefit themselves, and mankind, if they are 
encouraged to study and accumulate knowl- 
edge at the expense of their elders right up to 
the age of thirty; if thereafter they serve their 
profession for thirty years, they will render a 
hundredfold all that they have cost. But it 
is only the few that can answer the measure 
of this rule. The great majority, if kept in 
economic idleness till thirty, or even twenty, 
would remain so for ever: in them the in- 
stincts which lead the young to active exer- 
cise, to production, to be doing for themselves, 
far outweigh any acquired and inherited tastes 
for study and research; if these primary in- 
stincts are thwarted by tempting the young to 
remain out of touch with the strain and pur- 
poses of adult life, too often the result is a 
disappointment. Here we come upon a diffi- 
cult controversy which can be better handled 
in a later chapter. 

3. There is a second and still more modern 
problem offered to our notice when we seek 
a line of demarcation between the helpless 
young and the helping adult. Among the 
young of all animals are some who fail to reach 
the stage of independence — they sicken, or are 
maimed. How do the strong treat the weak? 



26 THE SCHOOL 

On the whole, nature is pitiless : it is true that 
here and there exceptions occur among ani- 
mals, but mutual aid seldom extends to those 
who will never be fit to make repayment. 
And it is only by slow degrees that man has 
come to a different way of thinking (or rather 
of feeling) and has taken under his protection 
not only the children but all who are really 
helpless — the blind, the halt, the insane — 
and let us add, in still more recent times, the 
criminal. By adding these to his charge, he 
steps into regions where the biologist will no 
longer serve to answer his riddles, for he 
appears to find satisfaction in protecting and 
educating those who will make the race no 
return for his efforts. When an Education 
Board at the present day establishes a school 
for cripples or for the blind, it no doubt hopes 
that a few of these sufferers may reach eco- 
nomic independence, but ratepayers and tax- 
payers are scarcely deceived by such pious 
hopes; we work and pay for such unfortunates 
because they belong to us, and we admit the 
social obligation that will lead us to care for 
them and, if need be, to protect them, all 
their lives. Yet, be it well remembered, this 
care for the unfortunate among the young, 
whether a product of self-regarding virtues 
or of philanthropy, is conditioned by an 
economic situation. It may seem a harsh 



THE YOUNG OF MAN 27 

doctrine, but one reason why society now 
cares for idiots and cripples is that it can 
afford to do so. 

In fact, the chief reason why govern- 
ments support education is because the 
investment is sound. These are luxuries, 
i. e. they are evidence of economic security 
— and it is a commonplace of social science 
that although the love of money is the root 
of all evil, a cash balance is a necessity of 
progress. As a family becomes well-to-do 
it keeps boy and girl longer at school, and 
when the State finds the budget swelling 
it will spend something extra on education: 
in both cases the motive is mixed. The 
result, too, does not always answer to the 
design: our word " school' ' does indeed an- 
swer to the situation implied in its derivation 
(o-^oXt), leisure); both scholar and teacher at 
school are, in this sense, of the leisured class; 
but it by no means follows that the issue of 
these leisurely pursuits will be for the benefit 
of the race. 

4. Let us, however, consider further those 
aspects of modern education which are con- 
cerned with the interplay of the two factors 
— the release from economic pressure, and 
the extended helplessness of the young. 
Helplessness, like every other tendency, may 
become fixed as a habit: when the time comes 



28 THE SCHOOL 

for the child "to put away childish things," to 
share with his elders in the struggle for exist- 
ence, there is often a sharp conflict before the 
habits of youth are broken. The young must 
ultimately share our responsibilities and bear 
our burdens, or the race is lost; how long can 
we risk leaving them without such experience? 
It will be readily observed that the increas- 
ing surplus of wealth, together with the im- 
mensely increased security in its possession, 
has made this a crucial question in modern 
civilization. Classes in society are formed 
whose effort is directed not only to provide 
economic freedom, with schooling, for their 
offspring during infancy, but to extend this 
security right through life. The old dictum 
was, "If a man will not work, neither shall 
he eat"; the new doctrine often runs, "Our 
children will not need to work, if we elders 
can work for them and provide much goods, 
laid up for many years." Thus it has become 
possible, more and more since the dawn of 
history, for many individuals to live right 
through life without having to provide cloth- 
ing and shelter at all: they belong to the 
leisured class, or to professional classes, set 
apart and supported in order to care for ideal 
needs of our complex humanity — needs which 
have no relation to any view of life on which 
biology can throw light. 



THE YOUNG OF MAN 29 

But even here the struggle for existence goes 
on, and with a fiercer zest. The "top dog" 
among mankind seeks to maintain his own 
order with at least as much energy as the 
soldier-ant. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that education has become a battle-ground 
for class struggles. As soon as a member of 
any group discovers that schooling, of this or 
that type, is of benefit to the young of his 
" class," he will fight to secure it, just as he has 
fought to secure goodly pastures, and he will 
fight for that sort of schooling which will main- 
tain his class, as a class, with its social outlook, 
its class bias, its solidarity. At this moment 
in England we witness an excellent example 
of the play of these forces. Up to ten years 
ago popular sentiment in our large cities 
cared little for "high school" education: the 
common opinion among manufacturers and 
tradesmen was that a boy had better finish 
with his schooling as soon as possible and 
"get to work": fourteen was "quite old 
enough for a lad to be put to doing some- 
thing." But opinion has changed: men have 
come to see that a secondary education 
counts heavily in favour of those who have 
secured it; and now the democracy are insist- 
ing that these novel benefits shall not be 
confined to the classes who can pay for them. 
On every hand cheap secondary schools 



SO THE SCHOOL 

have been established, and boys and girls, 
with little discrimination as to talents or 
character, flock to them, thus extending to 
seventeen or eighteen their "period of in- 
fancy." But the "leisure" and freedom of 
secondary education is not good for all, 
only for those, whether rich or poor, whose 
character is fitted for it. In a later chapter 
we shall hope to show how these considera- 
tions may be applied to the problem of sec- 
ondary education. 

5. It will be readily seen what grave anxi- 
eties are here presented as to the kind of 
schooling which is offered to the rising gen- 
eration. The normal animal instinct would 
lead a child, as he enlarges his economic ex- 
perience, to forage for himself, to provide for 
his own wants and those of his kin; but in- 
stincts may be partly suppressed or atrophied, 
and a false type of schooling comes into vogue, 
which extends not only the period of helpless- 
ness, but the inner attitude of helplessness and 
dependence. Thus a type of being is created' 
that refuses to forage, a parasite preying on 
his fellows, a drone, whose body will defile 
the hive unless it be expelled. Such a type of 
schooling may become perilous to the welfare 
of an entire people; and the questions it raises 
invite us into regions of political controversy 
beyond the ambition of this book. A survey 



THE YOUNG OF MAN 31 

of the types of schooling offered in English- 
speaking countries would show that most 
children are still being trained to take a share 
both in the economic and civic responsibilities 
of the coming age; but others are indulged 
with fatal habits of dependence, while a third 
class learn the habits of the soldier-ant, who 
maintains his economic independence by 
"governing" his servants. Such a man 
cannot forage, but he has learnt the arts of 
control, and thus can induce others, black 
and white, to forage for him. With the varied 
resources and the varied responsibilities of 
the British Empire it would appear that there 
is room for all three classes for many years to 
come. 



CHAPTER III 

THE RISE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 

1. In this preliminary inquiry as to the 
origin of the School we have used the phrase 
"the adult community" as standing apart 
from "the young." But this requires further 
analysis. How does "the adult community" 
go about to fulfil its function? The work has 
indeed been of slow growth. We have already 
taken a glance at those far-off days when 
man first found himself able not only to 
"struggle for existence" but to struggle with 
himself, rising to higher things. We saw that 
it was due to those first efforts of liberal 
education which were to be witnessed round 
the domestic hearth. 

And technical education finds its origin in 
ages equally remote. What an animal learns 
from his parents is an affair of blind imitation, 
and so to a large extent it has been and 
always will be with mankind; but human 
elders have always been ready to explain, to 
show the how and why of tool and con- 
trivance. Now just at the point where such 

32 



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 33 

explanation took shape as a deliberate design, 
there we must admit the dawning not only of 
apprenticeship but of an art of education 
in its technical aspect. 

Thus began schooling — as an indispens- 
able duty of the family — and to the family 
the adult community assigned the task. 
The tribe, for other purposes, combined and 
re-grouped itself in various ways, but, in prim- 
itive times, the advancement of the young, as 
regards both skill and knowledge, rested with 
the parents, and could not be regarded apart 
from the problem of family sustenance and 
family progress. In spite of the varied ex- 
periments made in ancient and in modern 
states to relieve the family of this burden, it 
would still appear that the soundness of the 
body politic greatly depends upon the proper 
discharge of this function. The neglect of 
it in any household leads to degeneracy. 
Both in the squalid shelters (not to be called 
"homes") of the lowliest poor and at the 
opposite pole of society, where some of the 
wealthy leave their offspring to the sole care 
of nurses and tutors, the same disastrous 
phenomenon is seen. 

2. Education, then, took its rise in the 
Family, and can never be safely severed from 
it. But with the growth of civilized com- 
munities something more has been demanded: 



34 THE SCHOOL 

life becomes more complex, ideals seek a 
wider range; families combine into tribes, 
tribes into nations. Culture, which burned 
with feeble flame on the family altar, becomes 
organized on a wider scale; the need is ex- 
perienced for a separate caste, a tribe of Levi, 
a band of Druids who shall tend the sacred 
fire, and foster the traditions, the passions 
which make a People and a Race. Many 
tribes, indeed, felt so deeply this demand 
for spiritual guidance that they took shape as 
a theocracy, with a national polity controlled 
by the chiefs of their religion, readily sub- 
mitting their destiny on earth to those priv- 
ileged ones who enjoyed communion with 
heaven. Hence education, at its earliest 
appearance as an organized scheme, is the 
concern of priests and clergy; even in com- 
munities where civil and religious authority 
stood apart, the latter retained control of the 
organized processes of culture. Whatever 
share might be retained by the Family, all the 
more public and permanent attributes of 
culture were absorbed by a caste whose power 
increased with every advance in human 
knowledge. Here is the origin of the school, 
as an institution, i. e. a collection of scholars 
from various households; with a teacher, the 
agent placed in charge of the institution. 
It should be observed that the first type 



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 35 

of school to be evolved is a professional 
one; the teacher's first concern is to re- 
produce his own type, to care for succession 
within the caste. In the darkest days of 
Israel, "when the Lamp of God had almost 
gone out," the child Samuel is called to 
minister before Eli. In such periods there 
can be no distinction between secular and 
religious education: law, medicine, fine art, 
science, all arose from the same sacred 
fountain and poured their treasures into the 
same sanctuary; all these materials of prog- 
ress and culture were jealously preserved 
by the guardians of the spiritual mysteries. 
Confining this superficial survey to Christian 
Europe, we may say that, up to the epoch of 
the Renaissance, no other conception of the 
control of education was possible. 

3. And yet, without any conscious recog- 
nition of severance, two or three movements 
were at work in which the layman operated 
apart from his spiritual adviser. The leisured 
classes (if one may speak of leisure in days 
when idleness was unknown) developed a 
form of education adapted to the needs of 
the court. The page submitted to a long 
course of schooling before he was at last sent 
forth a belted knight. The profession of 
arms had become a highly organized career, 
sharply in contrast to the clerical calling. 



36 THE SCHOOL 

True, our Odo of Bayeux could wield a 
mace as easy as his crozier, but he had few 
successors; succeeding times demanded a 
finer specialization of employment. Thus 
the princes of this world, restive then as now 
under the clerical yoke, took a hint from 
the methods of the Church and turned school- 
master; the elaborate example of the monas- 
tery was countered by the equally elaborate 
equipment of the castle, where, to use the 
modern phrase, "the governing and directing 
classes" were taught to fight and rule. "To 
rule" as well as to fight, for Law was the 
earliest of the professions to strive against 
Church supremacy; canon law was met by 
common law; and to the training of the clerk 
in the monastery, and of the page in the castle, 
there had already been added, before the 
days of Chaucer, that of the lawyer in the 
secular court. 

At a lowlier level the growth of city life 
laid the foundation of an apprenticeship 
system. Trade guilds were as highly organ- 
ized as were the grander corporations of 
Church and of nobility. Wealth, here as 
elsewhere, gave leisure for citizens to school 
the young in the arts of the counting-house 
and workshop: the problems of commercial 
and technical instruction were being handled 
in many a European city; the grammar 



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 37 

school and song school were left to the clergy, 
but the humbler task of fitting the lad for 
his secular calling was not neglected either 
by merchant or by craftsman. 

At the present moment, in America, voca- 
tional education is being discussed as if 
some novel principle were at issue, but the 
story is an old one; ever since the dawn of 
schooling the claims of Vocation have con- 
tended for supremacy with the Family and 
the Church, and they now seek to influence 
the State, which, as we shall see, takes a 
masterful direction of the whole machinery. 

4. Now, while these types of school — train- 
ing for knighthood, for law, for trade — like the 
monastic school, prepared for a definite career, 
they differed therefrom in being conducted 
without the aid of professional teachers. In 
more primitive times the father had trained 
his sons both to fight, to barter, and to manu- 
facture; this duty is shared by others, but 
it is not as yet devolved upon persons set 
apart for the task: such instruction is merely 
a supplement to the daily toil. The Church, 
which at earlier epochs had created and 
fostered the school, was the first to evolve 
the professional teacher, with his special 
school-craft, with his grammar, his Trivium 
and Quadrivium — a liberal education, valu- 
able in itself apart from its relation to other 



38 THE SCHOOL 

departments of the clerical life. True, the 
teacher remained for long attached to the 
ecclesiastical order ; just as lawyers and 
physicians up to the seventeenth century were 
largely clerical, so up to our own epoch, the 
teacher retained his alliance with this order, 
which made of teaching a distinctive function. 
It was in the universities that the separa- 
tion first began: long before the defiance of 
Rome by Luther, these resorts of learning had 
rebelled against the traditional rights of 
bishop and pope; and although sympathies 
between the scholar and the priest will always 
exist, they have tended more and more since 
those days to reach their goal by different 
routes. But, apart from universities, school- 
ing in medieval times remained as an affair 
of religion. The grammar school, in its 
origin a professional school for the clergy, 
had long ago opened its doors more widely; 
among the boys who flocked to school in the 
Middle Ages there were many who sought 
liberal culture apart from clerical aims, and 
the Church welcomed them and taught them 
freely. She had her reward at a later day: 
when the storm of Reformation broke over 
Europe, when the voice of pastor and priest 
lost much of its power over men's affections, 
they were still permitted to keep their hold 
over the young, controlling the school which 



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 39 

they had founded and fostered for the ben- 
efit of mankind. 

Throughout Europe the same rule pre- 
vailed. Like the Catholic priest the Protes- 
tant pastor retained the oversight of schools 
within his sphere; among Englishmen the 
Puritans, alike in old England and new, 
rivalled the ancient Church in zeal for teach- 
ing: when Acts of Uniformity drove a dis- 
senting clergyman from his parish he found 
occupation, if not solace, in the instruction 
of youth. Nor did the tie weaken in later 
days. When, at the close of the seventeenth 
century, the Charity School was set on foot, 
it was the clergyman who fathered it, and 
the aim of the teacher was still directed 
rather to piety than learning. In the succeed- 
ing century, when the demand for universal 
schooling arose in every European coun- 
try, the churches found a new field for the 
exercise of their influence, more extensive, 
although less exalted, than their sphere in 
medieval ages. In earlier days the Catholic 
Church had shared with universities and 
grammar schools the ideal of liberal cul- 
ture; now, in an altered world, the Churches, 
no longer one but many, have taken their 
share in handing on the torch to the humble 
and the poor. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that the 



40 THE SCHOOL 

teacher is still in many quarters regarded 
as a lay ministrant to the clergy: as a pro- 
fessional man he still finds his social status 
largely as an adjunct to "the cloth"; no 
wonder that the churches, especially those of 
ancient fame, continue a claim upon their 
offspring. 

The resistance to these claims is also a 
matter of history as well as of present poli- 
tics; it might well be sketched as one act in 
the great tragedy wherein State and Church 
have been protagonists since the days of Con- 
stantine. For it is the State which emerges, 
in one shape or another — aristocratic or 
democratic, local or central — as a fourth cor- 
poration, rivalling the Family, the Vocation, 
and the Church in the control of school and 
teacher. Luther looked to the princes of 
Germany to help little children to spell out 
the word of God : the modern Socialist * says 
boldly, "the State is the Over-Parent, the 
Outer-Parent." While the Family cares with 
instinctive jealousy for the welfare of the 
individual child, and the Church, with lofty 
ideals, claims him for the service of the 
Eternal, the State is envious of both, and 
insists that the care of the young is a prime 
duty of Government. 

Long years ago the Churches discovered 

1 H. G. Wells: Socialism and the Family, p. 57. 



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 41 

that the School was the true recruiting-ground 
for adherents; at last her rivals have copied 
her example: every new movement, in com- 
merce, in art, in politics, seeks to "capture" 
the teacher and the schools, until the problem 
of the children, instead of being the dullest 
of political issues, threatens to prove not only 
the most perplexing, but the most absorbing 
topic which can engage the attention of 
public men. 

An analysis of these claims, and an attempt 
to reconcile them under the conditions of our 
time, must be deferred to a later chapter. 

5. Thus, by taking a hasty survey of 
more primitive conditions, we find the 
ground prepared for considering the func- 
tion of the School. Education, as we shall 
discuss it, is concerned with the young, 
the immature; it is something specific and 
deliberate, added to the vague influences of 
environment and circumstance which attend 
the growth of experience; and, in its origin 
at least, concerned with the higher, the 
spiritual needs of man. If man had been 
content to "live by bread alone," the young 
of man might have continued to seek physical 
survival by process of imitation: but the 
school is the product of their aspiration. 

The School is not a building, but an in- 
stitution, with two factors — the scholars and 



42 THE SCHOOL 

their teacher: the latter, after the lapse of 
ages, finds for himself a separate career, a 
part to play in the complex drama of a modern 
nation. Within his school he is a master, 
cut off from his fellows by the distinctive 
marks of his profession; but they in turn, as 
parents, as clergy, as officers of State, are 
his masters and contend for his obedience. 
But before attempting to reconcile this con- 
flict, we must turn back; we shall be better 
able to consider who shall control the school 
if we first of all discuss its purpose. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 

1. In the above chapters we have already 
noted the first common-sense reason for 
maintaining schools. We may express this 
by the formula — enlargement of experience. 
The child needs, for example, the three R's, 
practice in using his hands, knowledge of 
history and geography, command of tools; 
some of these experiences he can, perhaps, 
more effectively gain at home, but, on the 
whole, he is found to be better adapted to his 
environment if he goes to school, especially 
as he there meets with his fellows, learning 
from them as much as from his teachers. 
But this naive account of the situation merely 
disguises the difficulties of the theme before 
us, for when we endeavour to realize proper 
aims for the school and the limits to be assigned 
to these, we are confronted with the most 
perplexing chapter of educational science. 

For, first, this simple formula assumes that 
enlargement of experience is a process analo- 
gous to feeding: we, the adults, are to impart, 

43 



44 THE SCHOOL 

while the young are to receive with open 
mouths. Too often is teaching thus crudely 
conceived as a mechanical process wherein 
the subject, vaguely called "the child," re- 
ceives with docility the superior, ready-made 
learning of his seniors. But "the child" 
who attends an educational institution, at 
any age from three to twenty-three, is a 
rapidly changing being who, as we shall see 
in the next chapter, undergoes strange trans- 
formations, passing through stages or periods 
in each of which his reaction to experience 
assumes a different shape. 

Secondly, in spite of helplessness, this 
sturdy "infant," so far from taking all we 
offer him for granted, is on the road to con- 
quest over his elders! The relation between 
old and young should not be conceived as 
something fixed and static; the one meekly 
accepting what the other authoritatively dis- 
tributes. While to all appearance the child is 
being moulded and formed to suit the plans 
of those set over him, he is unconsciously a 
rebel, preparing in silence to underpin the 
walls which have sheltered him; he begins in 
childhood a life-long struggle between con- 
vention and freedom, and one function of 
the school is to give fair scope for this spirit 
of independence: "where the spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty," is a doctrine which 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 45 

serves us in pedagogy as much as in religion 
or politics. 

Thirdly, this desire for freedom is not 
merely self-assertion, but it springs from the 
same source as that "divine discontent" 
which was suggested in an earlier chapter; it 
is the supreme function of the school to foster 
ideals, or, to speak in more technical terms, 
to help the young to evaluate experience, 
establishing their own standards for appre- 
ciation, in every department of conduct and 
life. Just as, in matters of sense-experi- 
ence, the scholar replaces his vague percep- 
tions of distance and size by standards of 
measurement which become year by year 
more accurate, until the man of science fully 
armed can approximate to the truth with 
astonishing minuteness, so in matters of 
behaviour man is on the search for standards 
by which to measure up the worth of whatever 
is offered him. 

Now, any adequate review of the purposes 
which a school has to fulfil must take account 
of each of these features of the situation, and 
I shall hope, after examining them more 
closely (commencing with the third), to arrive 
at a statement of these purposes which will 
be found to accord with the inner meaning 
of the movements by which, both in England 
and abroad, the face of school education is 



46 THE SCHOOL 

being slowly readjusted to a new social 
order. 

2. Standards of satisfaction. — As the varied 
world of experience opens before the child, he 
begins to form his tastes, places a high value 
on this while despising that: unsatisfied 
always, but gradually, as the years pass, find- 
ing limits to the hopes and fears that can 
possess him. Now the school, under favour- 
able conditions, can play a dominant part in 
this process, for it seizes on the leisure time 
of life; it prevents the child from "sinking 
back into the beast," by calling his attention 
to things that are "lovely and of good 
report": thus he is helped in creating his 
system of values, which form the basis of his 
character. "The hart panteth after the 
water-brooks" — and therewith his measure 
is taken, his limits are reached; man also 
manifests desire, but his standards reach 
higher; he needs water from the brook, but 
he has discovered also a longing for God. 

This, I repeat, will always be the chief end 
of schooling: men's standards will change, 
systems of theology and morals, of knowledge 
and art, will come and go, but the worth of a 
man, to himself and to his generation, will 
always depend supremely upon his taste, 
upon his choice of satisfactions out of the 
numberless avenues of experience to which 



FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 47 

modern life invites him. No doubt these 
avenues are wider for the children of the 
leisured class, but the great things of life, even 
its finest possibilities, are no longer confined 
to the wealthy: the child of poverty can be 
poet, preacher, man of science, if he chooses 
such a path. And now, as in earlier days, 
however much the facts may be forgotten or 
disguised, schools are maintained because men 
want children to set their affections on what 
is worthiest. 

Our contentions for mastery over the 
schools wax so fierce simply because we differ 
so fundamentally in our conception of what 
is worthy of esteem. But quarrel as we 
adults may among ourselves in our declara- 
tions of faith, we are compelled to unite in 
recognizing that the young will pursue the 
same restless quest which has stirred the 
human spirit in all the ages. And, while 
the manner of this contention is often a 
humiliation to Christian men, it at any 
rate proves the earnestness with which, 
now as at the dawn of education, men are 
determined to keep open for the young the 
roads that point to the stars. Fight as they 
may among themselves, secularist and ortho- 
dox contend for control of the children just 
because the issue at stake touches man at the 
centre of his being. 



48 THE SCHOOL 

3. Tradition v. Progress. — Amid all these 
arguments, we can distinguish two oppos- 
ing forces, due, perhaps, to temperament as 
much as environment, which contend for the 
scholar's allegiance in every type of school: 
one relies upon the past, upon reverence for 
tradition, obedience to law, appreciation of 
the great things handed down by wise and 
famous men of old; the other bids youth 
forget the things that are behind, and find 
satisfaction in discharging his duty to the 
world about him; it shows him a vista of 
undiscovered values in science and art, and 
bids him seek new revelation there, letting 
"the dead bury their dead." Conservatism 
and Progress appear thus as contradictory 
claimants for the allegiance of the school, 
and we shall trace their influence again when 
we consider how the aims of the school govern 
our choice of "pursuits." Both seem to 
justify their right to engage the attention of 
youth; however anxious a modern world may 
be lest youth should be ignorant of physiology, 
it is equally solicitous to preserve the memo- 
rials of our race, for it is only through these 
that idealism takes concrete shape. Much 
of the past may doubtless be "scrapped" as 
lumber, but at least a few cathedrals, a few 
stories such as that of the Prodigal Son, one 
or two Greek heroes, a few choice tracts of 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 49 

glorious scenery, a Chippendale chair, and 
even the rude tools of primitive man — all 
these help youth to shape his conception of 
life's meaning, viewing himself as heir of all 
the ages. 

But with equal eagerness the progressive 
spirit in the modern world attempts to 
capture the school on behalf of new knowl- 
edge, and these efforts take shape as move- 
ments for technical or vocational education. 
The child must be so instructed as to be able 
to earn his bread, and at the present day when 
science, transportation, politics have trans- 
formed the adult world of manufacture and 
commerce, the schools are summoned to 
"wake up." In spite of the teacher's affec- 
tion for culture, he is hustled into the market- 
place and challenged to prove the value of 
his wares in terms of salary and dividend. 

It would, however, be a caricature, even 
when writing for a "nation of shopkeepers," 
to represent the advocates of Progress as 
merely concerned with the struggle for exist- 
ence in commerce and industry. On the con- 
trary, the sentiment here at work is universal 
in its range; and it affects the school, because 
the elder generation, conscious of imperfec- 
tion and failure, hopes, through schooling, to 
"call in a new world to redress the balance of 
the old." "My school-days," says the father, 



50 THE SCHOOL 

"were passed idly and unprofitably enough; 
my children at least shall not suffer that mis- 
fortune." So, where he learnt only some 
scraps of Latin, they shall add French and 
German; formerly an outline of natural 
history, with "the use of the globes," was 
all that science offered to the young; now 
every decade presses a new discovery upon 
his wearied brain — the chemist, the physicist, 
the electrician, the botanist, the geographer, 
all claim that the progress their studies have 
made should be represented in the school 
curriculum: and we must refrain from at- 
tempting even to catalogue the list of social 
sciences which, under various rubrics, are 
pressed on the attention of the young. 

4. Convention v. Freedom. — This rivalry 
between old standards and new does not, 
however, complete the picture. Values are 
abstract, ideals are in the clouds; they are 
brought down to earth by means of symbols, 
ceremonies, customs; men hold together and 
retain their kinship only by the agency of 
settled machinery which represents and re- 
covers through the sign, the living reality 
which it signifies. Value which intrinsically 
belongs to the original is thus transferred to 
the image; and degeneration in man, as 
man, has always been recognized when he 
learns to worship idols, and finds his satis- 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 51 

faction in obeying the tyranny of custom; 
conformity, submission, compromise there 
must be, but in his striving for a higher life, 
aesthetic, intellectual, or moral, man ever 
reasserts his freedom and escapes once more 
the bondage of forms and conventions. Now 
the school has always been seized upon as a 
ready means for preserving the continuity of 
settled forms. "Train up a child in the way 
he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it . ' ' As conceived in earlier times , 
this institution was an exclusive society, ex- 
pressly designed to reinforce the efforts of 
family and clan to conserve the distinctive 
qualities of the stock. This is the proper 
definition of "culture," imparting the mys- 
teries of the cult — language, arts, manners, 
rites — to shape the correct form in which 
youth is to be bred. 

And let no one suppose that the process as 
witnessed to-day is merely a survival of by- 
gone practices: on the contrary, it is a per- 
manent characteristic of all community life. 
Conventions and symbols are necessary; they 
are only mischievous when they usurp the 
place of reality. The young are ready 
enough to imitate the habits of their elders: 
practical though they are in many senses, 
they are also sociable, and intuitively accept 
the style of the life about them. And yet the 



52 THE SCHOOL 

rising generation, as we have seen, cannot 
accept without change the standards and 
values of its forebears; for all who, putting 
away childish things, become men in any 
real sense, the transformation from infancy 
to manhood is essentially an advance from 
a life controlled by custom to a life of inner 
freedom; as children, we see through the 
glass darkly; as men, we face experience 
with open eyes. Hence the new wine, the 
gospel revealed unto babes, cannot be con- 
fined in the old bottles of convention; it was 
surely in some such sense that Jesus of Naza- 
reth spoke when, smiling at the little ones, He 
averred that of such is the kingdom of heaven. 

It can readily be understood how effectively 
scholastic methods have aided in the main- 
tenance of established modes of culture. The 
school-masters, agents in this process, are 
themselves the chief upholders of discipline 
and custom. They themselves have been 
"schooled" to discharge their office by devo- 
tion to the accredited symbols of culture, and 
too often, shut as they are within the cloister 
of their profession, they make a fetish of these 
disciplines and neglect the eternal values, the 
realities of experience from which their cul- 
ture took its rise. 

The study of Greek among Western nations 
at the present day offers a striking illustration. 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 53 

Gifted boys and girls, especially when aided 
by teachers who appreciate the imperishable 
things of Hellas — such scholars carry their 
study from the letter to the spirit and marvel- 
lously expand their view of life. But when 
teachers and scholars with scantier equip- 
ment pursue the Greek language, they are 
worshipping a fetish : their pursuit of ancient 
forms of speech renders little service be- 
yond attaching them closer to the rank and 
class which they attempt to adorn. Nor 
must we assume that the traditional studies, 
of which Greek and Latin are typical, are 
alone subject to the process by which the 
realities of experience may sink to the levellof 
meaningless custom. On the contrary, the 
inevitable tendency amongst those who force 
new pursuits into the school curriculum under 
the plea of practical necessity for life's voca- 
tions, is to mould these studies into a cultural 
system which, to the young, appears no less 
mysterious and meaningless than much of the 
scholastic lore which has been handed down 
the centuries. The process is always the same, 
and in the interest alike of children's welfare 
and of the advancement of knowledge I 
invite the reader's careful attention to it. 
We may take as an example the efforts at 
reform made by Herbert Spencer, exerted 
through those four famous essays on Educa- 



54 THE SCHOOL 

tion. Spencer voiced the progressive opinion 
of his time on behalf of science: the children 
are being deprived, he declared, of knowledge 
about all that lies in most direct relation to 
their needs; they possess bodies and are 
ignorant of physiology; even the mothers 
and daughters know nothing of the laws of 
nature which underlie the vital concerns of 
our domestic life. He succeeded in moving 
public opinion: those who controlled the 
schools became genuinely in earnest to arouse 
in the young a desire to learn about these 
things, and South Kensington examined 
millions of children in physiology and the 
laws of health. The result certainly has not 
met the hopes of those who started the 
scientific movement in schools. Undoubtedly 
they have succeeded in establishing the 
prestige of science: it is placed side by side 
with the more venerable pursuits of the 
academy, and all the machinery of learning 
is available on its behalf; it takes rank, with 
its logic, its text-books, its examinations, as 
part of the cultural system; the scientific 
man claims equal rank with those who profess 
more venerable cults. But, while thus elabor- 
ated and organized to suit the tastes of adult 
thinkers, the pursuit of science loses the very 
qualities which make it of service to the 
young. Chemical atoms have no advantage 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 55 

over Greek particles unless the advantage 
becomes part and parcel of values realized 
and appreciated by the school-boy; physi- 
ology may be immensely important for the 
welfare of mankind, but all the exhortations 
of anxious reformers will not compel the 
young to care about it unless it can be brought 
into relation with their crude and unorganized 
experience. 

5. We are here brought squarely face to 
face with that conflict of purposes which is 
at present acutely dividing the teaching body 
all over the world, and is the source of differ- 
ence oftentimes between parties neither of 
whom recognizes the origin of their dispute. 
We have seen that the school is adopted 
by the adult community as a vehicle for 
controlling values and ideals, presenting to 
the scholar the best that adult life affords, 
whether from the tradition of the race or from 
its stores discovered anew in art or science; 
and it uses the school as a means for rein- 
forcing by authority all that has grown to 
be accepted by society with the routine and 
symbol and style that both express their 
meaning and stamp them as approved. Thus 
the rising generation are trained to accept 
values for life on the model of their elders; 
and are expected to find satisfaction, both 
for behaviour and for thought, in docile 



56 THE SCHOOL 

acceptance of what they are "taught." But 
when we actually examine the facts, that is, 
when we observe the phenomena of child 
nature; even when we merely diagnose the 
method^by which the rising generation brushes 
aside the tradition of the elders, we have to 
admit that only half of the story has yet been 
told. The situation, indeed, is not without its 
pathos, as every father and mother can bear 
witness, when the youngsters take flight from 
the nest. For hitherto we have treated the 
relation between young and old as a static 
one, whereas both are on a moving plane, and 
the youngster moves fastest, with stronger 
impulse and with surer footing. True enough, 
as we saw above, the young are helpless, and 
are ready to receive all that they can secure 
in gift from their elders; but they reconvert 
to their own purposes the treasures of learning 
that are poured upon them. It is their prov- 
ince to rediscover, to discard and reject all 
that does not serve their purpose. We are not 
far gone in the twentieth century, and already 
the young bloods of literature are telling us 
that the nineteenth century, nurtured on 
Darwin and Tennyson, is a "back number" ! 
With due docility our young people obey 
the conventions which we enjoin, learn with 
diligence the grammar and mathematics, the 
cricket or the drill which we impose, but all 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 57 

the while their inner nature is preparing to 
break with convention, and roam afield in 
search of alien ideals. While we fondly rule 
our offspring as though we were gods, training 
them after our own image, they are uncon- 
scious rebels, feeling somehow that revolution 
is necessary for the salvation of mankind. 

We can, perhaps, from this standpoint best 
explain the immense influence of Rousseau 
and of Pestalozzi. When we set a student 
of education to read Emile or Leonhard und 
Gertud he often becomes impatient: while 
acknowledging the strength of their senti- 
ments, and their devotion to the young, he 
feels that many of their chapters are trivial 
and banal, sometimes even grotesque; and 
he cannot conceive how their contemporaries 
can have been so stirred by these romances; 
he demurs when we insist that this age and 
these men saw the dawn of a new epoch in 
schooling. The explanation is easy when we 
remember that western Europe was opening 
up the era of democracy, of political freedom : 
and the same sentiment that made Burns 
declare "a man's a man for a' that," startled 
the world to the possibility that children also 
might be "free"! True, neither Pestalozzi 
nor Rousseau put the situation in these terms : 
with them it was a plea for Return to Nature 
(with a capital N, which stood for much 



58 THE SCHOOL 

nonsense also); but they were in reality 
voicing the revolt of the rising generation 
against those tyrannies of custom which, by 
its schooling, had oppressed the child in 
education more heavily than his parents had 
been oppressed in the world of politics or 
economics. Thus we see emerging an aim 
for the school, which has gathered force 
from a hundred contributing streams since 
the days of Pestalozzi: it opposes at every 
turn the rigour of accepted convention, and 
claims initiative, independence, freedom for 
the child. Helpless as he is, ready to wander 
and be lost as he may be, he must yet be 
"free," and we, on his behalf, should cherish 
his freedom and allow him, as a set principle, 
to do much for himself and to imagine that he 
is doing even more than he actually achieves. 
If to some readers this explanation appears 
unbalanced, I am convinced that others will 
recognize it as a true interpretation of phe- 
nomena which can be observed not only or 
chiefly in school, but in every house where 
there are children. Time out of mind the old 
folk have lamented that the young are less 
disciplined, more "independent," than they 
themselves were in like case; but this com- 
plaint has never been so widespread or so 
well founded as during the last fifty years. 
In other words, the spirit of democracy, of 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 59 

equality — call it what you please — has inevit- 
ably affected men's attitude towards the 
family and the child, and it is at last slowly 
penetrating our views as to the purpose and 
method of the school. Any one who takes up 
the pedagogic literature which is especially 
characteristic of our epoch (I may, perhaps, 
single out the writings of John Dewey as 
being most significant), will find this same 
keynote running through it all, viz. the desire 
to let the child live his own life and settle his 
own system of values. So far from resenting 
his self-possession and independence, we 
should recognize that such an attitude (if 
natural and not merely a pose) is essen- 
tial to orderly growth towards manhood and 
womanhood. 

6. We must dwell a moment longer on this 
topic, for we meet here with one of the critical 
problems of contemporary education. Free- 
dom is a fine word to juggle with, but we hope 
that we are making clear precisely what it is 
from which the child may seek to be freed: 
it is freedom from convention, from symbol 
when to him the symbol is merely a sign, from 
custom when the custom can plead only usage 
and not use in its defence. In the best of 
schools, the machinery of formal lessons can- 
not but be artificial: the standing reproach 
against teachers is non vitce sed scholce discunt. 



60 THE SCHOOL 

they teach for school and not for life. The 
more this machinery has been elaborated in 
modern days, the more it tends to defeat its 
end: codes and rules, time-tables and pro- 
grammes, all, if pushed to excess, serve as a 
hindrance to personal development. Charac- 
ter is a make-up of many qualities, but some 
of these at least are due to the spirit of inde- 
pendence. After all is said, character can 
only be my character: if it has not been 
formed by me, if I am not allowed choice, at 
least in details, if I cannot say Yes or No, then 
the virtues are merely borrowed; and the 
outcome is not a character but an understudy. 
The child in all periods of history has mani- 
fested the same desire to try his wings, and 
his efforts begin to be recognized in this epoch 
simply because the spirit of freedom, if not of 
licence, is everywhere in the air and challenges 
convention at every turn. That its presence 
in the schoolroom is often unwelcome, that 
its advent is so long delayed is not surprising. 
The School is always a day behind the fair: 
the stir of philosophy, of science, of politics, 
only penetrates slowly within its walls: and 
in an issue where so much is at stake, where 
the antagonists are so fairly matched, one can 
scarcely be surprised if the anxious teacher 
hesitates to embark his restless youngsters on 
the adventure to which educational reformers 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 61 

would entice him. True, the teacher seeks 
freedom for himself, but that is a different 
matter: as we shall see below, all who take a 
hand in controlling the schools are united in 
demanding elbow-room. In England many 
authorities are concerned in school organiza- 
tion; we have so many inspectors, secretaries 
of boards, principals of schools, each entitled 
to his freedom from superior authority, that 
little independence or initiative can be left 
to the scholar: and from what one hears 
abroad even ultra-democratic communities, 
such as the United States or our own colonies, 
seldom realize how thoroughly the spirit of 
democracy is invading the classroom. 

So we witness the rival forces of discipline 
and freedom encountering at every turn. In 
all relations of life, if a man is to play his part 
and render service he must accept convention, 
learn habits of submission, restraining the 
"unchartered freedom" in which youth 
delights; but if the inner spirit is depressed, 
if the instinct for liberty in the larger and 
deeper issues of life is quelled by authority, 
then the school has stopped the springs of 
being at its source. 

7. We have so far described the function 
of the School as concerned, in the realm of 
values, with compromise between the claims 
of tradition and progress; and, in the relations 



m THE SCHOOL 

of children to the adult society, with com- 
promise between convention and indepen- 
dence. But, it may be asked, why not be 
more precise? Why not lay down the law at 
once and indicate on behalf of children what 
standards of taste are to be accepted; why 
not formulate an ideal and give substance to 
these eternal values after which the child 
should aspire? and, as regards freedom, why 
not define the limits where convention must 
be rejected or accepted? It is at this point 
that a sharp difference in method reveals 
itself between the new pedagogy and the old. 
We are attempting in these chapters to exhibit 
the trend of thought among modern students 
of education, in their search to find secure 
footing for a new science (if we may make 
pretensions to such a title). Now, the first 
obligation imposed upon any profession which 
seeks to systematize its practice in theoretic 
terms is to recognize the limits to its range, 
and if we can to-day, in any sense, speak of 
a science of Education, it is because we see 
more clearly than the pioneers were able to 
do the boundaries of our field. The text- 
books of education are strewn with abortive 
efforts to cover the whole range of philosophy; 
assuming the right, even the duty, of the 
school-teacher to determine issues which lie 
beyond his authority. But it is not for him 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 63 

to decide between the warring camps of ethics 
and of religion, or to settle the balance be- 
tween humanities and science. In earlier 
days men like Locke in England, Herbart in 
Germany, or Laurie in Scotland, did attempt 
these bolder flights: endowed with great 
philosophic insight, and experienced also as 
instructors of youth, they expounded a com- 
plete system; setting out with a noble ideal 
for humanity, they deduced from this a 
complete scheme for the work of the school- 
master, which, if steadily pursued, would 
educate youth to perfect man. These were 
great achievements, and as examples for study 
are beyond praise: chief among them, the 
Herbartian System as elaborated by Herbart's 
disciples (of whom Rein at Jena continues to 
be the most distinguished exponent) is of 
abiding worth. 

But the example of these great thinkers is 
scarcely likely to be imitated, for, with the 
increasing specialization of function which 
characterizes the modern world, we shall not 
again find a philosopher to compare with these 
great minds of the past, who framed a system 
of ethics and philosophy which could be re- 
duced to the terms of an educational manual. 
The teacher, like workers in other professions 
and callings, has to accept his place, and 
although to some it may be regarded as a 



64 THE SCHOOL 

derogation of his office, he appears to me to be 
transgressing his function when he claims to 
impose his own ideals, his personal philosophy 
of life upon the school. These young folk are 
not his own to handle as he pleases: they be- 
long to the home, to the State, oftentimes also 
to a Church : and the teacher is the servant of 
the community, not its master. Nay, more, 
the child, as we have seen, means to be his own 
master some day, and he will not be grateful 
to his teachers if they have endeavoured to 
cramp his experience by a philosophic system 
conceived by a teacher in the study. 

Other considerations reinforce this view. 
We distinguished at the outset between 
schooling and education because the large 
field of education includes every means by 
which the race, both adult and young, seeks 
the higher purposes of existence; but the 
school is limited to immature beings, who are 
only feeling their way in matters of conduct: 
ideals, like every other form of experience, 
are in process of growth; the youth's ethic is 
simple, his view of morals primitive; in days 
not far distant he will no doubt take flight, 
and may range beyond the boldest aspirations 
of his teacher, but for the present he is con- 
tent with the simplest fare. For the teacher 
also this is the wisest course. Like every pro- 
fessional man, he is an actor, playing a pro- 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 65 

fessional part. When alone, or with other 
adults, he can find scope for adult modes of 
experience; can see the world with larger 
vision, can drop the school-master and find 
relief in the thoughts and feelings of his con- 
temporaries. There is no hypocrisy here, 
although there is restraint; there is submis- 
sion to convention; for the obligations of his 
post require that a man who lives among 
children shall be a child while in their com- 
pany, but shall, for their sakes as well as his 
own, maintain his personal freedom among 
the men and women of his own age. 

Is there not, after all, a smack of insincerity 
in the more popular view which lays upon the 
school and the teacher excessive and exclusive 
obligations as regards morals and the training 
of character? The school is not the only 
place where right conduct is to be imposed. 
If righteousness is in demand, is it more 
necessary in the city school than in the City 
Council? Is it for the good of the community 
that an Education Board should be more 
moral and religious than a Board of Health? 
The school and its teachers are the creation 
of the community: the teachers spring from 
"the people," and the people control the 
schooling: hence the ethics of the school, 
its standards and ideals, are such as its 
creators fashion. As Professor Dewey has 



66 THE SCHOOL 

warned us: "There cannot be two sets of 
ethical principles, or two forms of ethical 
theory, one for life in the school and the 
other for life outside of the school." 

It has been the dream of theorists that our 
places of education, by some magical influ- 
ence, should regenerate the nation and create 
a new type of man; the literature of the Vic- 
torian era, at the epoch when education was 
first made compulsory, is full of sentiments of 
this kind. That dream has gone, but we can 
replace it by a larger hope: the school is no 
longer to be a special preserve for morals, 
with its teachers cut off from their kind as a 
lay clergy dispensing a special cult, but we 
may witness it increasing its hold on the 
affections of the community when it frankly 
stands side by side with the market-place and 
the factory, sharing with them a code and 
an ideal which will inform every region of 
conduct and every rank of society. 

We can agree, then, with those who hold 
that the work of the school must be placed on 
an ethical basis, but are conscious of no 
derogation from the loftiness of the teacher's 
office when we bid him accept what I have 
elsewhere described as the Ethics of the 
Period. He does not create this ideal, but his 
school activities should express it with all in- 
tensity and sincerity. In engaging its teachers 



FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 67 

the State can expect no more from them than 
it desires from all good citizens; true, many 
of them have dedicated their lives to the 
service of humanity from elevated altruistic 
motives, thinking more of the ideal purpose 
than of the rate of pay: happy are the chil- 
dren who come under the influence of such 
teachers : but that is not in the bond. Nor are 
such saints to be found among teachers and 
clergy alone: the life of consecration is pur- 
sued often in the strangest company, for "the 
wind bloweth where it listeth." 

Finally, we defend this limitation of the 
aims of schooling from another point of view, 
from the standpoint, namely, of the* psychol- 
ogist; for there is a subtle danger to the 
healthy development of children in the 
common attitude which brings either religious 
practice or ethical reflection too much into 
the focus of the child's attention. Here, 
again, the writer has no desire to disparage 
the solicitude which the churches and the 
moralists display on behalf of the young. But 
their error (at least until recent years) has 
been found in the neglect to study the child's 
nature; he is very open to suggestion, and 
responds readily to emotional appeals, but 
if the subject-matter of these appeals lies 
beyond his range, his interest readily evapor- 
ates and his emotional response becomes a 



68 THE SCHOOL 

mere convention. Those who exercise the 
healthiest influence over children, those, that 
is, who are most respected and beloved, 
whether teachers or parents, often hold them- 
selves in reserve; they refrain from probing 
too intimately into the recesses of the childish 
heart, they abstain from exhortation and 
rely upon suggestion rather than formal 
instruction. If high standards are to be the 
outcome of school experience, these must 
grow in the storm and sunshine of each day's 
events, not as a separate and specific product 
which can be exposed to view, but as the 
very breath of life. Here the intuitions of 
wise pastors and teachers correspond to the 
dictates of genetic psychology, which applies 
to the growth of moral ideas and sentiments 
those laws of development which will engage 
our attention in the following chapter. The 
moving of these deep currents of "moral 
thoughtf ulness " should be looked for, not in 
the stage of childhood, but as the finest pro- 
duct of education during adolescence. 

8. We thus bring into relief what now 
appears as the peculiar function of the pro- 
fessional teacher; to be the student of a 
growing organism. The institution which he 
conducts is not merely a place for imparting 
instruction, but distinctively a place where 
all the resources of science are brought to 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 69 

bear upon the problems of growth and change. 
This view of his calling becomes all the more 
impressive in modern days because the 
sphere of schooling is so greatly enlarged; 
the progress of mankind may be imperilled 
by false conceptions of education, just as 
this progress may be ensured by ideals in 
harmony with those vast designs which 
mould the destinies of creation. 

And if at every epoch these considerations 
were of weight, they impress us, above all, 
in these modern days because the spread of 
schooling and of culture accelerate at unex- 
ampled speed the spirit of change; a decade 
now serves to familiarize the world with 
novelties which, in earlier epochs, would have 
sufficed for a century. In such an epoch the 
school has to fulfil the function of a balance 
wheel, steadying the restless energy with 
which society enters upon novel adventures, 
giving time for childhood and youth to grow 
at easier pace to a mastery of a new age. 

Among these newer conceptions there is 
one which has of recent years successfully 
asserted its claim to be included within the 
functions of the school, and we may conclude 
this chapter with a brief allusion to it. Hith- 
erto we have discussed the child's experience 
and needs as concerned solely with his mind 
and character, and in earlier days the school 



70 THE SCHOOL 

had little concern with his physical equip- 
ment; it was only in the boarding institution 
— public endowed school at one end of the 
social scale or truant school at the opposite 
end — that matters of health, food, and cloth- 
ing were deemed worthy of attention. But 
all this is now changed: science has taught 
us the intimate relation between physiology 
and psychology; the physician has become 
indispensable as adviser and inspector of all 
types of school, and watches the condition 
both of teacher and of scholar. Twenty years 
ago, the opinion was universally held that 
while children might freely receive the higher 
gifts of spiritual and mental nurture, the 
school must abstain from affording the 
physical basis of a "free" breakfast, for fear 
of undermining parental responsibility; but 
to-day, in all countries where children are 
starving or sick, it is acknowledged that the 
function of the public school must include, 
with or without the aid of parents, due tend- 
ance for the physical frame; and that the 
teacher, if need arise, must minister as a nurse 
as well as an instructor. 1 

1 Space forbids any adequate discussion of the experi- 
ments with school clinics, conducted in London since 1908. 
The pioneer of this movement, Miss Margaret McMillan, 
who combines a rare insight into child nature with the fervour 
of an apostle, is convincing many administrators that the 
school clinic is not only a logical sequence of the Medical 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 71 

It is not surprising that this extension of 
our duty to children has led to much searching 
of heart; it now appears more plainly than 
before how fatally the young are trained if 
we lead them to expect all to be provided for 
them, without any return on their part; in 
former days, when The Family was the source 
not only of physical nurture, but of much 
intellectual nurture also, the child was re- 
quired to share in the domestic burdens of 
the household: to-day conditions are pro- 
foundly altered; not only among the depend- 
ent classes who hover on the verge of star- 
vation, but in all ranks of society, the child 
has far less opportunity in his home environ- 
ment of realizing the need for personal service. 
Thus a generation has grown up which tends 
in its subconscious attitude towards life and 
duty to be dependent on the State, or on other 

Inspection Act, but that it can be maintained by public 
authorities at comparatively small cost. Nor should this plan 
be regarded as suitable only for schools in slum neighbour- 
hoods, although, no doubt, for such children the need is most 
urgent and the profit most obvious. The work of Dr. Clement 
Dukes long ago at Rugby, of Dr. Mumford more recently at 
the Manchester Grammar School, to quote only two examples, 
shows what can be done for secondary schools, while as 
regards colleges and universities, the control of students' 
physical life established in many American institutions would 
repay careful study. The sinple fact is that the collection 
of scholars day by day provides everywhere the opportunity 
for successful diagnosis and oversight such as can never be 
rivalled by the isolated efforts of family practice. 



72 THE SCHOOL 

powerful agencies which can, if they will, 
provide for its wants. It is not without 
significance that, during these same years, a 
school of thought has gained some influence 
in Europe which teaches men to look to the 
State for the complete regulation and main- 
tenance of the community; no doubt, in the 
desperate condition of the abject poor in the 
great cities of Europe, it is not surprising that 
such a theory should strike root, apart from 
the influence of schooling, but if we recognize 
that men are moulded more by the indirect 
suggestion of their environment than by the 
open expression of opinion, then great weight 
should be attached to the subconscious effect 
on children of the elaborate provision made 
for them since the State has seriously under- 
taken to provide universal education. 

During some ten years of his life, the child 
witnesses the school — with its apparatus, its 
teachers, its comforts provided for him with 
ever greater and greater care, solicitous more 
and more to please and interest him, solicitous 
not only for his mind, which is a remote affair, 
but for his stomach and his body — replacing 
more and more the guardianship of home. 
Can we be surprised that here as elsewhere 
the child is father of the man, and that the 
outcome of a philanthropic system which 
ignores child-nature while bestowing ungrudg- 



FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 73 

ing gifts, is to create a type of adult nature 
which continues to clamour for support? The 
remedy will not certainly be found by putting 
back the clock: it can only be sought by a 
deeper study of the laws of growth; by dis- 
covering, that is to say, such modes of con- 
ducting the pursuits of school as shall enable 
the child, not only of the indigent but of the 
prosperous family, to practise while under 
tutelage such habits of service as lie within 
his range, so that when he reaches years of 
discretion he will be truly "free," not only as 
a voter, but as a worker in his community. 
Thus it appears that the enlargement of the 
function of school to include hygiene and 
physical sustenance will compel those who 
control it to revise their conception of its 
curriculum and daily life; and in a later 
chapter we shall offer hints as to how this 
may be effected. But we must first deal in 
more detail with those stages of growth which 
have already claimed our notice, and which 
demand consideration before we can with 
any success determine how to occupy young 
people during the years of school. 



CHAPTER V 

STAGES OF GROWTH (OR DEVELOPMENT) 

"Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, 
At least I soil no page with bread and milk, 
Nor crumple, dog's-ear, and deface — boys' way.'\ 

It may seem out of place to quote poetry 
in support of the researches of psychology, 
but when the poet is Browning an exception 
may be allowed. In Rabbi ben Ezra and in 
Development we find aid to our contemplation 
not only of childhood and of youth, but of 
those later stages which lie beyond the prov- 
ince of these chapters: "Youth shows but 
half!" 

1. The most convenient dividing line at 
which to begin the study of growth in a hu- 
man being is that which marks the onset of 
adolescence. For not only are there decisive 
physical changes which mark the fuller ex- 
pression of sex both in its so-called primary 
and secondary characters, but the associated 
new mode of mental life is equally impor- 
tant as a turning-point in development. 
Stanley Hall, the chief investigator in this 

74 



STAGES OF GROWTH 75 

field, writes: "Adolescence is a term now 
applied to a pretty well-marked stage, begin- 
ning at about thirteen with girls and a year 
later with boys, and lasting about ten years, 
to the period of complete sexual maturity. 
It is subdivided into pubescence, the first two 
years; youth proper, from sixteen to twenty 
in boys and perhaps fifteen to nineteen in 
girls; and a finishing stage through the early 
twenties. The first stage is marked by a great 
increase in the rate of growth in both height 
and weight. It is a period of greater suscepti- 
bility to sickness for both sexes; but this 
vulnerability is due to the great changes, and 
the death-rate is lower in the early teens than 
at any other age. It is the time when there is 
the most rapid development of the heart and 
all the feelings and emotions. Fear, anger, 
love, pity, jealousy, emulation, ambition, and 
sympathy are either now born or springing 
into their most intense life. Now young 
people are interested in adults, and one of 
their strong passions is to be treated as if they 
were mature. They desire to know, do, and 
be all that becomes a man or woman. Child- 
hood is ending, and plans for future vocations 
now spring into existence, and slowly grow 
definite and controlling." 

The important feature of the situation is 
that the adolescent looks upon his world with 



76 THE SCHOOL 

new eyes : and this world includes his own life 
to an extent that was impossible at earlier 
stages. As a child he was fond of exercising 
his motor powers, of watching the actions of 
other people and trying out these in his own 
experience; fond of repeating such an action 
and proud of attaining skill. But now as a 
youth (we may adopt the term youth as more 
convenient than adolescence to cover this 
entire period) he finds human behaviour to be 
of absorbing interest; and since the field of 
exploration is so vast, since also it extends to 
the intimacies of his own behaviour, it is no 
wonder that time is required for adjustment: 
no wonder that a youth is often wayward and 
fanciful, appearing "difficult" to those who 
have him in charge. For he feels himself 
already a man, sharing our ideals, with im- 
pulses and emotions reaching far beyond the 
possibilities of attainment. 

On account of their outstanding importance 
for mankind, two realms of experience, viz. 
religious experience and the relations of the 
sexes, have been commonly regarded as claim- 
ing special attention in adolescence, for the 
one marks the spiritual progress of the race, 
while on the other depends its survival. 
Hence the guardians of youth, in all types of 
civilization, have taken these as their distinc- 
tive province. Indeed to many people the 



STAGES OF GROWTH 77 

whole life of youth is regarded as one pro- 
longed and anxious crisis, marked by instabil- 
ity and danger. There is some truth in this 
view, especially as regards the earlier years, 
which Arnold of Rugby used to describe as 
"the dangerous period" through which the 
lad must be "hastened" in order the more 
firmly to settle his outlook towards life on a 
foundation of "moral thoughtf ulness " such 
as guides the actions of the grown man. 
There is truth also in this presentation when 
we contrast humanity in these years with the 
earlier stage from, say, eight to twelve which 
will receive our notice presently. 

But there is a grave risk in thus exagger- 
ating the outlines of the picture. To the 
youth himself, the new life is not a period 
of storm and stress, unless his environment 
arouses the storm. He is new to the situation, 
and therefore at first lies open to suggestion 
from every quarter; inexperienced in the new 
country, and eager for experience, he answers 
readily to every call. But the stir of moral 
and religious impulses and of the sex instincts 
is only one manifestation of the new life: 
the intellectual life also appeals to him on 
every side, just so far as his capacities and 
his opportunities permit. As Mr. Irving 
King says: "Wherever suggestion is strong 
enough, we find many instances of sudden 



78 THE SCHOOL 

awakenings in other spheres than the religious. 
The reason for their being relatively so abun- 
dant in the religious sphere is because ... a 
pressure is usually brought upon all within 
reach of such influences. . . . We find evi- 
dences of sudden awakenings in various direc- 
tions. Many boys and girls first become 
conscious of the meanings of various studies. 
After long periods of grinding in mathematics, 
language, literature, music, etc., the subjects 
suddenly clear up. We have instances of 
rapid changes from a pessimistic to an opti- 
mistic attitude, clearly attributable to a 
simple social suggestion." 

2. While this new life is a definitely new 
mode of experience for all human beings, it is 
significant also as a parting of the ways be- 
tween individuals or groups whose differences 
in capacity have hitherto been concealed. 
Thus in America, in schools where white and 
coloured children are taught together, it is 
often found that the coloured race will com- 
pete with success up to the age of twelve, but 
thereafter they fall behind. It would appear 
as if the qualities inherited by man from 
remote ancestry, shared by an entire group, 
serve the child adequately until the dawn of 
adolescence; the more immediate inheritance 
then comes into play, and a man of good stock 
forges ahead, rejoicing in the freedom of his 



STAGES OF GROWTH 79 

new powers, impatient of restraint; while the 
mass of mankind remain content with the 
conventional experience which sufficed for 
their ancestors. 

Hence we find that nations, or rather groups 
within nations, which care for good breeding 
and have mastered a machinery of culture, 
seek to assist nature by fostering systems of 
schooling especially adapted to this period, 
while laying less stress upon the years of 
childhood. Greek education was the most 
conspicuous example in ancient times, as is 
the higher English education in modern times. 
For, if we may revert for a moment to an 
earlier chapter, it is in youth that the man or 
woman learns to fix standards of value; "all 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 
them" are spread before him, and he makes 
his choice. At first there is inconsistency; 
every month displays a new affection; sug- 
gestions pour in from every quarter; but as 
the years of youth pass by the steady pressure 
of a system of culture asserts its sway and 
fixes the style, the standards, the ideals for a 
lifetime. The strongest intellects, the fiercest 
emotions, resist the pressure more or less, and 
hence we witness so often the victory of 
rebellious youth. Revolt, here as elsewhere, 
is justified by success: the man or woman 
who has the gifts, the inborn capacity to 



80 THE SCHOOL 

assert his own supremacy, can spurn the 
strongest pressure of social or academic cul- 
ture. From such situations emerge the poets, 
the thinkers, the innovators of all kinds: for 
these youth is indeed a period of storm and 
stress. 

Now the fact is that these exceptional char- 
acters have always claimed special attention 
from observers and biographers, and to this 
cause one attributes the exaggerated views of 
men like Stanley Hall as to what should be 
the normal course of development. The adult 
always tends to exaggerate the importance of 
adult (i. e. of his own) life, and to estimate the 
earlier stages merely from his point of view, i. e. 
as preparatory exercises for the achievements 
of maturity. Hence his desire to capture the 
youth, while still plastic, on behalf of those 
values which seem to him of most importance ; 
hence his alarm when biographies of great 
men reveal the excesses of the adolescent 
in rebellion, or when devoted educators such 
as Arnold of Rugby and Stanley Hall sound 
a note of warning. But to the youth him- 
self, the present life affords a sufficiently 
varied scene: the period is not merely a 
preparation, but is itself a life; and if it 
ends there, it has issued not only in promise 
but in fulfilment. 

Hence a deeper sympathy with youth would 



STAGES OF GROWTH 81 

caution teachers and parents to restrain their 
hand: not indeed from the cynical point of 
view which approves of sowing wild oats, but 
from a larger trust in human nature, and a 
sounder confidence in the wisdom of the 
coming race. "It is questionable, therefore, 
whether in early adolescence strong social 
pressure should ever be brought to bear upon 
the youth in any one direction. The most 
normal development will be attained by 
letting him live in the midst of a society occu- 
pied with its customary functions." 

3. The later years of adolescence, from 
about eighteen to twenty-three, are merely 
distinguished from the earlier by the extent to 
which habits and ideals have become fixed; 
statistics of physical development, height, 
weight, etc., have been adequately secured, 
but these can scarcely be correlated with pro- 
gress in mental development, for this last is 
partly conditioned by environment and oppor- 
tunity. No common standard can be laid 
down to describe the mental growth of a 
labouring man who from the age of fourteen 
has spent his best energies in making bricks, 
along with that of a college student whose 
interests have been divided between the foot- 
ball field and the laboratory. Nor, again, can 
either of these be discussed along with the 
scope for initiative provided for a youth of 



82 THE SCHOOL 

capacity who is placed in responsible charge 
of affairs before he is twenty years of age. As 
we have seen, the advancement of culture has 
brought with it an extension of the duration 
of schooling far beyond the legal age of adult- 
hood: and while this is a wise provision for 
those who are fit for it, all our knowledge of 
youth's capacity warns us that the academic 
life, affording, as it does, small outlet for 
achievement except in sports or in debating 
clubs, scarcely corresponds to the require- 
ments of the period during these closing years. 
The Black Prince won his spurs at Cregy 
before he was seventeen; William Pitt and 
Fox were in Parliament before they were 
twenty-two. These were, of course, excep- 
tional natures, trained precociously for public 
affairs, springing, too, from a stock that fos- 
tered their capacities; but they may serve to 
show the trend of adolescent development, 
and to mark the difference between the ear- 
lier and later stages. Young men, and women 
too, want scope for energy; not, indeed, that 
they are always fit to embark upon their final 
career in life, but they are anxious to "try 
their hand"; and the healthiest system of 
culture is surely one which gives scope during 
these "years of wandering" for some inde- 
pendence in achievement. 

If, by way of summary, one had to give 



STAGES OF GROWTH 83 

advice to those who are to take the charge of 
youth, we might urge, first, that normal sub- 
mission to custom and environment should be 
enforced, but that variation and even eccen- 
tricity should not be too harshly judged; 
secondly, that variety of outlook and experi- 
ence, both of men and of things, should be 
afforded; above all, that the best of these, 
both the personal influence of sympathetic 
and generous teachers and the guidance of 
the best in literature, science, and the arts 
should be presented. Much will be rejected, 
but what is retained will be retained for 
life, and the gratitude of youth to those 
who provide it with discipline and sympathy 
is boundless. 

4. Turning now to the earlier life of child- 
hood, we are embarrassed by the variety of 
lines of demarcation drawn by different inves- 
tigators. We can all recognize the advance in 
experience made by the infant when he learns 
to walk and to speak, but if at later stages we 
are too positive in correlating age with capac- 
ity our conclusions may be questioned. There 
is, however, one well-marked point of depar- 
ture: at about the age of eight the brain has 
grown to its full weight, and this achievement 
must be admitted as having decisive bearing 
upon the mental life as well. Hence we may 
mark off the years eight or nine to twelve or 



84 THE SCHOOL 

thirteen from that of childhood proper, which 
reaches from infancy to the age of eight. 
Here, again, it is necessary to urge that each 
span of years in itself is a complete stage, with 
its own mood of reaction to experience, its 
own standards of satisfaction — even as the 
caterpillar stage is a life distinct from that of 
the moth. 

On emerging from infancy the little child 
sets out to master the world, i. e. to make in 
succession a series of differentiations breaking 
up the unity into a finer and still finer range 
of discriminations. To the baby in the cradle 
a coloured ball is not a separate object, but 
just a stimulus which evokes an immediate 
response: he has not differentiated between 
himself and the object, or between the object 
and the activity which it calls forth. For the 
grown man the same stimulus, if it secures his 
attention at all, calls up an inconceivably 
complex response: and for every adult the re- 
sponse will be different. The task of the psy- 
chologist is to describe the order of this process 
of differentiation; to interpret, that is, the 
relation of overt acts to the whole field of con- 
sciousness — and not merely to some mental 
power, such as imagination or fear — finding 
meaning and consequence in the child's 
behaviour as observed in its setting here and 
now. During the last forty years, beginning 



STAGES OF GROWTH 85 

with Preyer's First Three Years of Childhood, 
many investigators have recorded with wealth 
of detail the items of infant behaviour, but, 
unfortunately, much of the work is discounted 
by the attempt to interpret the phenomena in 
terms of adult functioning, whereas the very 
purpose of the inquiry is to discover how the 
simple resources of the child, functioning in 
his child world, enable him to grow to the 
wholly different being with a mind which 
functions as adult man. "Preyer, the 
founder of the scientific psychology of child- 
hood, frequently uses pre-existing classifica- 
tions of psychology upon which evolutionary 
and genetic ideas have taken no effect. He 
employed them as Procrustean beds by which 
to measure the facts dealt with. The data 
were genetic, but not the method of treating 
them nor the conclusions finally reached." 
Sufficient material has, however, been accu- 
mulated to enable genetic psychology to 
outline the course of development, in terms 
such as the chief authorities at the present 
day are agreed in accepting. 

The period of two and a half to six or seven 
is usually described as the playtime of life, 
and the language is accurate if by play we 
understand not the idleness that the adult 
demands as a means of recreation after toil, 
but an entire attitude towards experience. To 



86 THE SCHOOL 

play is to image an activity and act out 
the image, instead of merely displaying im- 
mediate impulse in response to stimulus. 
Everything is material for play-acting, and 
obviously what is near and oft-repeated stim- 
ulates the player more rapidly than what is 
occasional and remote. It must be borne in 
mind that the child is not, at the beginning 
of this period, conscious of the disparity be- 
tween the object and his mode of expressing 
it; he does not regard himself as playing a 
part, but as living a life. This explains why 
myth and fairy-tale are taken so much as a 
matter of course; to him they are not fantastic 
because he has not yet discerned the dividing 
line between the real and the imagined. All 
his actions are directed to the learning of facts, 
to a better estimate of values, and play is the 
process by which he attempts to relate these 
to himself. By such efforts he combines and 
re-combines his images until he gets the better 
mastery of them: he constructs a little world 
of his own, and if his innate capacities are 
great, or if his tutors feed him with fairy- 
story, he will often overflow with fancy, 
exactly as his savage ancestors used to do in 
their efforts to master their world. 

It is, then, a mistake to regard the love of 
fairy-story or myth as something isolated 
from the rest of experience: rather it is a mode 



STAGES OF GROWTH 87 

of life, which governs the whole, just so far as 
this life is unfettered. For other instincts are 
at work besides this of play; by play no doubt 
the child reaches out to the new world; but 
instincts of self-preservation in the present 
world also controls his action; he accepts con- 
trol, and reacts to the behests of his elders; he 
does as he is told, not from a sense of duty, for 
he has no such sense, but as a matter of course; 
and equally as a matter of course he expects 
compulsion when he rebels. And much even 
of his free activity can scarcely be described as 
play : for in play his intelligence is to the fore, 
testing and selecting; but his little body still 
enjoys the simple reactions which he displayed 
in earlier years as a baby, and enjoys them all 
the more because he has now full mastery of 
his limbs; hence he spends much time in 
mere gambol, aimless running, hitting, and 
shouting. 

Now, as this period draws to its close, the 
experience begins to have its inevitable effect 
— in disillusion. It is this change that Words- 
worth describes with such rare feeling, but 
with a false note of sympathy, in his Ode on 
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections 
of Early Childhood. There is no loss — at least 
there need not be — in the discovery that the 
play and the reality are disparate. For a time, 
no doubt, uneasiness is felt, and we witness 



88 THE SCHOOL 

one of those transition periods which the psy- 
chologists mark off as intervening between the 
more decisive stages in human growth. Thus, 
as the life of playtime closes, a year or two 
about the age of seven or eight is noticed when 
the child is dissatisfied with mere activity and 
yet cannot discover any remoter purpose in 
his performance. In some cases, especially 
where children are left much alone, fancy runs 
riot, and a child or a group of children will 
even adopt a second personality. 

5. And so a second stage of existence 
emerges, which, omitting subdivisions, may 
be taken to cover the years from eight to 
twelve, until another shorter period of tran- 
sition ensues, often called the pre-adolescent 
period, leading on to the larger life of youth 
which we have already described. 

"At eight or nine there begins a new period, 
which, for nearly four years, to the dawn of 
puberty, constitutes a unique stage of life, 
marked off by many important differences 
from the period which precedes and that 
which follows it. During these years there 
is a decreased rate of growth, so that the 
body relatively rests; but there is a striking 
increase of vitality, activity, and power to 
resist disease. Fatigue, too, is now best 
resisted, and it is amazing to see how much 
can be endured. The average child now plays 



STAGES OF GROWTH 89 

more games and has more daily activity, in 
proportion to size and weight, than at any 
other stage. It would seem, as I have pro- 
posed elsewhere, with ground for the theory, 
as though these four years represented, on the 
recapitulation theory, a long period in some 
remote age, well above the simian, but mainly 
before the historic, period, when our early 
forbears were well adjusted to their environ- 
ment. Before a higher and much more mod- 
ern storey was added to human nature, the 
young in warm climates, where most human 
traits were evolved, became independent of 
their parents, and broke away to subsist for 
themselves at an early age." 

We may hesitate to follow Stanley Hall, 
from whom we here quote, in his excursion 
into anthropology, but his description of this 
stage of life sets off some of the leading char- 
acteristics. It is often called the Period of 
Stability, in contrast to the lack of equipoise 
which marks the onset of adolescence. And, 
indeed, the young boy or girl from nine to 
twelve is quite a practical and effective person. 
When we speak of the employment of child- 
labour it is with reference to these years; 
such practices, whether in farm and garden 
or in Lancashire cotton mills, are a survival 
of customs which until the modern era were 
universal, and found their justification in the 



90 THE SCHOOL 

need, felt by all normal children in these later 
years of childhood, to test themselves against 
the objective world by seeking to achieve a 
result. Formerly, in the earlier stage, the 
mind was absorbed wholly in the image, and 
any kind of reproduction would serve the 
purpose of expression: but the disillusion 
experienced since those days has led the child 
to a clearer apprehension of relations between 
means and ends; the world, both the social 
world in which he now perceives himself and 
others as workers, and the world of things 
which he and others manipulate, is now re- 
vealed as a field for work. Here again we 
must define our terms: work to the child 
has little connection with wages — that re- 
lationship is the outcome of a riper civiliza- 
tion; economic values are as yet but slightly 
appreciated. No doubt the adult environ- 
ment more or less vaguely intrudes such 
considerations upon his field of consciousness, 
but the sharp intelligence about pence which 
we witness, e. g. in street arabs, is not in the 
line of normal development. 

The difference between the "play" activity 
of young children and the "work" activity 
of older children lies in the motive. With 
the little ones effort was put forth merely to 
define an image: these older children realize 
that action can produce results, and hence 



STAGES OF GROWTH 91 

they are only satisfied when a product (some 
object created apart from the child himself) is 
the outcome of stimulus. Hence, in contrast 
to the play attitude of his earlier life, our 
young workman now appears to be serious 
and industrious. This seriousness is, of 
course, only a seeming, for the infant at play 
was living out his life just as soberly and 
effectively as older folk, but we welcome the 
evidence of industry in the Period of Stability 
because we find the youngster beginning to 
grow up in our image; he poses as a little man, 
and the posture gratifies us; we think we 
are being imitated, although in reality the 
youngster is not concerned to imitate us, but 
merely to gain a foothold in the novel world 
of product. This stage is thus properly 
described as a period of stability, since, within 
their range, the boy and girl can now make 
steady progress in equipment. Now is the 
time for drill, i. e. for regular exercise in all 
acquisitions which possess meaning. "The 
period just preceding adolescence is, by reason 
of its stability of adjustment, more suitable 
than any other stage for methods of a drill 
character; that is to say, the old-time 
methods of the school-master result in less 
harm between the ages of nine and twelve 
than at other times; but with the beginning 
of adolescence drill methods become wholly 



92 THE SCHOOL 

unsuitable and only engender boredom and 
dislike of a subject" (Slaughter: The Ado- 
lescent) . 

How keen boys are at this age to learn 
games and to learn also to be useful, to do real 
work in companionship with mother and 
father, if the parents are still close enough 
to nature to bear a hand in domestic duties. 
It is here that the luxurious classes in modern 
times yield to decadent tendencies. In newer 
countries, such as Australia and America, 
even wealthy families retain some recollection 
of pioneer habits and are willing to let boys 
and girls "do chores," but in Europe false 
theories of culture, allied to contempt for 
manual toil, have tended ever since medieval 
days to cut off the child from his natural bent 
towards practical social activity. City life 
has intensified the evil, and middle-class 
families often imitate their betters until at 
last we have to look to the school to repair 
the neglect and to initiate reforms which 
will engage our attention when we seek below 
to apply the fruits of child-study to the prob- 
lem of the curriculum. 

6. We must forbear from lack of space to 
enter upon other phases of the mental life at 
this stage. Extensive studies have been 
made, mainly in Germany and America, of 
the child's reactions towards literature, to- 



STAGES OF GROWTH 93 

wards art, towards society, towards religion. 
It is now fifty years since the collection of 
such data was first proposed. The inquiries 
made in Berlin on the Content of Children's 
Minds on Entering School 1 set in train a host 
of investigations. Many of these, it must be 
confessed, are worthless, for the requisite 
skill has been lacking, but the work of 
Stanley Hall, of Earl Barnes, of Kerchen- 
steiner, to mention only three outstanding 
names, serves to rescue child-study from the 
ridicule which has befallen it in some quarters. 
Those who have constantly to deal with 
children at this stage, often find the most 
perplexing problems to arise from their atti- 
tude towards morals: at times they appear 
affectionate and social, helpful and altruistic; 
but, again, they present a self-centred front, 
absolutely proof against appeals to which an 
older person would at once respond. Explana- 
tion can only be found by reverting to the 
interpretation of mind in terms of function. 
Morals are a growth, and the child can have 
no moral code except that which ranges within 
his own activity. Adult values of behaviour, 
like adult society in all its phases, are too 
complex, and however readily an adaptive 
child may simulate the outward forms, he 
simply cannot share the higher life as personal 

1 Described in Stanley Hall: Aspects of Child Life. 



94 THE SCHOOL 

experience. He is, on the whole, selfish, not 
because he consciously aims, as adults are 
tempted to do, to succeed at the expense of 
his fellows, but because in these years he 
learns to function as an individual: only by 
this process of testing himself against the 
objective world — standing up, so to say, for 
himself — can he learn to preserve that per- 
sonal integrity which must precede any effec- 
tive display of altruism during adolescence. 
This must suffice as an indication of the 
method by which the genetic psychologist is 
to-day seeking to sift out and co-ordinate the 
mass of material which records the variations 
in children's activities. What is now needed 
is not so much the massing of further data 
about individual traits or interests of groups 
of children, but rather to secure the complete 
and continuous record of a few lives, noted by 
skilled observers who understand both how 
to select the relevant facts and how to inter- 
pret these in terms of their meaning for 
development. 

7. The need for such detailed records will 
be more readily recognized if we consider the 
difficulties encountered in the treatment of 
exceptional children. Throughout this chap- 
ter the reader, especially if he moves in aca- 
demic circles, will have probably thought of 
children of his acquaintance who, apparently, 



STAGES OF GROWTH 95 

correspond not at all to the stages above 
outlined; they are precocious, or, if we prefer 
a more technical term, supranormal. At the 
other extreme are subnormal children ranging 
all the way from the merely backward to the 
hopeless imbecile. Of the latter nothing can 
here be said except to affirm the value of the 
efforts now being expended on their behalf. 
Not that, as a rule, defective children can 
really be so trained as to mix on equal terms 
with other adults, but important benefits 
accrue from their segregation : the rest of the 
community, in schools and elsewhere, can 
receive better attention when relieved of 
the presence of these unfortunates. The skill 
and research expended on their behalf results 
in contributions to science which promote 
the welfare of mankind at large; here as 
elsewhere pathology comes to the aid of 
hygiene. Last, but not least, these unfortu- 
nate children themselves lead happier lives. 

As regards supranormal children, science 
has yet little to say, for while in some sys- 
tems of schooling exceptional capacity has 
been selected and fostered with great care, it 
is only now that attention to this field of in- 
quiry is beginning to attract attention from 
psychologists. 

We have spoken above of precocity and of 
supra-normality as if the terms were identical, 



96 THE SCHOOL 

but an obvious distinction should be noted. 
Precocity, strictly defined, has reference 
merely to time; the precocious child matures 
earlier than the average in one or other phase 
of development, whereas supranormal capac- 
ity denotes a more fundamental and perma- 
nent range of power which the subject may 
not display at all in his earlier years. For 
example, the precocious musician will be 
paraded as a virtuoso before the public at 
the age of eight; a slower child may conceiv- 
ably reach the same pitch of excellence ten 
years later. By itself, of course, precocity has 
no value; it is no benefit either to the per- 
former or to the audience for a child of eight 
to replace a man of thirty-eight as an inter- 
preter of music. The phenomenon is worth 
studying for scientific purposes, but before the 
performance is over, humane feeling would 
wish to put the child to bed; and those who 
appreciate music for its own sake will prefer 
not to have their impressions disturbed by 
such anxieties. The case of the supranormal, 
or, if we may adopt a popular term, the gifted 
child, is different. He may develop slowly; 
indeed, his powers as an adult may depend for 
their full bloom upon respite from pressure 
during the earlier years. While, again, the 
endowment may manifest itself in some 
special form of ability (it certainly is bound in 



STAGES OF GROWTH 97 

adult life to narrow itself down to some main 
stream of social activity), as a rule it is dis- 
played as a superior general capacity, a higher 
form of intelligence as much transcending the 
common run of mankind as these surpass the 
lowly-developed defective. 

But now, in view of these enormous varia- 
tions in the human breed, what becomes of 
our sketch of the growth of function on a 
normal scale in a series of stages with average 
limits of age? Well, the genetic psychologist 
answers by admitting fully that man, both 
in his powers of physical endurance and in his 
higher powers of mental capacity, is the most 
variable of all beings, and that as a result 
instances are always forthcoming of strik- 
ing variations from the normal, whether as 
regards any special quality or as regards the 
speed with which the common course of prog- 
ress is accelerated or retarded. But such 
admission does not allow of any abandonment 
of the order in which function waits upon 
function. John Stuart Mill was learning 
Greek at four, while a normal child would 
have been playing with toys. We cannot 
dogmatize as to the rights or wrongs of his 
case; we have no data to go upon to enable 
us to condemn or approve; he grew up to be 
a distinguished public man, but no one can 
affirm that he might not have been a man for 



98 THE SCHOOL 

all time if his father had not inhibited some 
of the childish instincts which assist the 
development of humdrum individuals. At 
this moment a parallel case is afforded in the 
son of Professor Sidis, a well-known teacher 
of philosophy in America, who has published 
views on schooling based upon the unique 
phenomenon presented by his son's progress. 
When this youth has reached the age at which 
Mill wrote his autobiography, the opinions of 
the father and the son will undoubtedly pro- 
vide excellent material for scientific inquiry; 
meanwhile, the cautious habit of physicians, 
who usually abstain from prescribing in the 
domestic circle, might be recommended to 
parents whose offspring are supranormal. In 
an age when mental phenomena are being 
handled with great seriousness, it is a grave 
misfortune when men of learning treat the 
methods of science with such contempt. For- 
tunately, this field of research is now begin- 
ning to be taken in hand, by competent 
inquirers: the experimental psychologists are 
busy with investigations into Individual Dif- 
ferences, and, although no immediate result 
can be anticipated from their inquiries, they 
are laying the foundation for methods of 
research which cannot fail to enlighten our 
knowledge of this darkest of all fields in 
mental development. And, however much we 



STAGES OF GROWTH 99 

may be impressed by a special case of varia- 
tion from the normal, either in genius or its 
opposite, our knowledge of what constitutes 
a normal mind in successive stages, although 
still inadequate, does afford a basis for the 
further study of school practice; it would 
therefore appear to be incumbent on those 
who organize educational systems to give 
due regard to this factor in their systems of 
schooling. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 

1. In our preliminary sketch of the rise of 
School as an institution we noted the early 
history of a conflict between elements which 
have contended, and will always contend, to 
secure the control of the young. Having now 
inquired more fully as to what is possible for 
the School to achieve on their behalf, we can 
resume the story and consider principles on 
which these contending forces can seek recon- 
ciliation, and review the duties which those 
who organize the schools have to fulfil. 

We have already seen that the State, *. e. 
the entire body politic which controls the 
individual in his public relations, has now 
definitely assumed responsibility for all types 
of schooling, and it is only by consent of 
the State machinery that Family, Church, or 
Vocation can hope to maintain a share of 
influence. There are, however, many ways 
by which a nation can express its will in the 
control of schools, and in Great Britain the 
method of control has gradually been evolved 

10G 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 101 

as part and parcel of our general custom and 
attitude in "Home" Government, i. e. the 
central authority in all our departments of 
State is expected to influence the community 
in co-operation with local authorities, inspect- 
ing their work, adding to their funds, regulat- 
ing their machinery, but never superseding 
them, and often leaving to them the initiative. 
It is difficult for foreigners to understand our 
mode of disputing about education in this 
country, because they find it hard to realize 
this distinctively English plan of aiding and 
abetting rather than taking the lead. When 
aid to the elementary schools began (about 
1832) it took the character of a financial 
contract: the State farmed out its obligations, 
paying cash in return for "results." Seventy 
years elapsed before England accepted to the 
full the modern position that the Government 
must act on behalf of the people at large in 
securing the permanence and efficiency of the 
instruments of culture in all its varied forms. 
It would take us beyond our limits to discuss 
the political basis of this theory; the decisive 
step was taken by the Act of 1902, and since 
this date the prestige of Government in 
educational affairs, both at Whitehall and in 
borough and county offices, has been enor- 
mously enhanced. It is, of course, still 
possible for non-state institutions, aided 



102 THE SCHOOL 

either by private endowments, by contribu- 
tions from churches or by fees from parents, 
to maintain their independence, and this 
open door should be stoutly defended, since, 
as we have seen, progress in all matters of 
higher intellectual and spiritual life depends 
upon "freedom, variety, and elasticity." 
But, while some institutions can continue 
this life, it is a grave misfortune if they 
are compelled to cut themselves adrift from 
the public system and segregate a portion 
of the community from the general stream 
of national life. The only means by which 
they can retain a share in control are of 
an indirect kind, influencing general opinion, 
thus securing that the State machinery 
actually does operate in the interests not 
merely of the official system, but of those 
wider and deeper needs which the family 
life, the religious life, and the vocational life 
express. 

2. As regards the religious life some further 
discussion is in place, for the relation between 
Church and School is always before us, not 
only in England but throughout Europe, and 
if at the moment it gives little concern in 
certain parts of America and of the British 
Empire, this is only because, at the present 
moment, the population in those regions is of 
a homogeneous character. 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 103 

Indeed, the first point for the student of 
this problem to observe is that conflict only 
arises when a community ceases to be homo- 
geneous in its general attitude towards reli- 
gious belief and practice. It is precisely 
because a portion of the community desires 
to be "free," i. e. to break away from the 
uniformity of the traditional faith, that the 
difficulties arise. Thus, in many parts of 
Ireland and of Quebec, as well as in portions 
of southern Europe, the Family and the 
School are in harmonious sympathy with 
Catholicism; in other parts of Canada and 
in the United States there is an equal homo- 
geneity of sentiment where the bulk of the 
population is Presbyterian, Methodist, or 
Baptist, and where, equally by common 
consent, the Church refrains from any direct 
interference with the School. But the re- 
lationship is none the less present; for the 
teachers and Boards that control the schools 
train the children steadily in sympathy with 
the view of life which characterizes the 
neighbourhood : it is obvious that they cannot 
do otherwise. 

It is essential to note that what we call the 
view of life touches not only religious observ- 
ance, but social morals and customs of every 
degree. This is a feature of the situation which 
is often overlooked or disguised by those who 



104 THE SCHOOL 

discuss this theme. The dissenter is as often as 
not a reformer in matters other than religion : 
, he and his kind tend to be "free" in many 
other matters besides those which "the 
Church" specifically defends; social groups 
tend to appear, influenced often by occupa- 
tions in life, and tend to break up the homo- 
geneity of a community quite as much as 
differences of dogma. The gulf between the 
parson and the labourer in many an English 
village is not so much a quarrel about religion 
as an alienation in culture, in speech, and in 
the entire outlook towards experience. Hence 
it is evident that the defenders of the old 
faiths have at stake something more than 
religious instruction to children. When the 
Jew in Manchester, or the Lutheran in 
Michigan, U.S.A. maintains a separate school, 
he does so because the School is a community 
whose life expresses not only the creed, but 
the manners and customs, the taste and 
tradition of the elders. 

Now it is vain to expect that homogeneous 
communities, such as we have noted above, 
will subsist for many generations in any large 
area of the modern world: essential as it is 
to humanity to maintain the continuity of 
tradition, the spirit of intellectual freedom (as 
we have seen in Chapter II) again and again 
breaks up the harmony, and the rising genera- 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 105 

tions set out on new adventures. Hence, as 
soon as the State undertakes to organize a 
complete system of education, the statesman 
has to feel his way through a conflict which 
penetrates to the deepest issues on which men 
engage. Here, as in the classical instance of 
the gospel propaganda, there must be "not 
peace but a sword ... a man's foes shall 
be those of his own household." Statecraft 
may choose to seek its ends by an indifference 
to the great things of life, treating the School 
as merely a dispensing shop for so-called secu- 
lar lessons; by a despotic contempt for free- 
dom which will attempt to force uniformity of 
practice upon all: or by manifesting a spirit 
of sympathy and tolerance which, through 
compromise, will sacrifice much of detail in the 
hope of achieving a deeper spiritual unity. 
As we survey the various battlefields in which 
the conflict has been waged, the principles 
under which such compromise is being worked 
out can be discerned, and it must suffice to 
indicate these in summary form. 

(a) Where a separate group in a neighbour- 
hood exists holding views of religion and life 
quite distinct from those of the majority, and 
numerous enough to provide children for a 
school, it is an act of tyranny for the State 
to enforce an alien culture on the children. 
In any event, »the pressure of the majority 



106 THE SCHOOL 

outside the school will exercise some influence 
over the young, and the State has no right, 
simply because of its dependence on a ma- 
jority vote, to stamp out the individuality 
of dissent, either of a dissent which adheres to 
old creeds or a dissent which proclaims a new 
evangel. 

The test of the claim which such a minority 
makes is its willingness to make sacrifices for 
that which it holds dear. If the patrons of 
such institutions are willing to "put their 
hands in their pockets," if the teachers are 
willing to sacrifice some part of their emolu- 
ment, or if the parents are willing to forgo 
some advantages in secular instruction for 
the sake of those greater things in creed and 
conduct which they cherish, under such con- 
ditions it is the clear duty of a statesman 
not to crush but to lend a generous hand in 
maintenance. So long as the separatist school 
conforms honestly to the minimum require- 
ments of a code, so long, that is to say, as a 
schooling is afforded which enables the child 
to keep step in tolerable fashion with the 
public standards of culture, the demands of 
the State are satisfied. For it must be borne 
in mind that the cultivation of the religious 
life is a matter which the State is simply in- 
competent to control. It acts through poli- 
ticians and officials who, whatever may be 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 107 

their personal character, are bound by official 
attitudes. The very spirit of freedom which 
has erected democratic government demands 
that families shall be free to practise old 
faiths and to cherish these through the 
schooling which the child receives. 

(b) But while we recognize the rights of 
dissent, and the duty of the State to aid the 
separatist school, some principle is needed 
to indicate the measure of this rule. The 
only principle that can be applied is to limit 
the support to the minimum needs of the 
situation. The Church exists not merely to 
maintain its foothold, but to extend its power, 
to gain new adherents; and with such pur- 
poses the State can have no concern. As a 
propagandist agency the Church must rely 
upon its own resources. If, as many allege, 
the aid afforded to non-provided schools by 
the Act of 1902 is such as to relieve them from 
their fair share of the burden, then an in- 
justice is being done, since the State is in- 
directly assisting in the promotion of special 
types of faith and custom. It is difficult, 
however, to come to any decision on such a 
point — even if it were within the province 
of this volume — for the financial data are not 
put before the public in a form which makes 
it easy to arrive at a fair judgment. It is 
for the churches which have benefited by that 



108 THE SCHOOL 

Act to offer the necessary proof, since so many 
of their fellow-citizens are offended by the 
employment of public funds to disseminate 
private opinion. 

(c) While defending the "right of the 
parent," as it is often called, to maintain the 
unity of the Family in opposition to the State, 
we must give room for the opposite principle. 
Children are not solely the property of their 
parents: they belong to the State; their cul- 
ture, as well as their vocation, is a matter of 
public concern. By residing in the com- 
munity which fosters progress, the Family 
shares the benefits of an advanced civilization, 
and, in return, must be content to forgo 
some of the authority over its children which 
it claimed in more primitive times. Formerly 
the Churches, as the sole fount of culture and 
science, controlled the freedom of the Family 
as regards its children: if they now exaggerate 
parental claims in opposition to the State they 
raise the further question as to the extent to 
which either State, Family, or Church is 
justified in its zeal to "capture" the rising 
generation. 

(d) For our study of child nature in the 
last chapter has exposed the limitations to 
which all adult forces are subject in attempt- 
ing to coerce the minds of youth. In matters, 
above all, of intimate personal experience, an 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 109 

attitude of reserve seems most prudent — 
even in the interests of the faith itself. True 
enough, the youth can readily be made an 
enthusiastic convert, but how often scepticism 
in the twenties succeeds devotion in the 
'teens. And so far as creeds are a matter 
of intellectual apprehension, the instructor 
must have patience and wait for the riper 
mind to grasp the fundamental differences 
which sever man from man. To the infant 
all churches and all moralities are alike, 
and when manhood comes he must mix 
with his fellow-men of every type, sharing 
their common code of ethics. If he is to 
learn to choose the good and to refuse the 
evil, it seems wise in the common interest 
that he should share, even as a child, to 
some extent at least, the public child-life 
of his neighbourhood, although his parents 
may protest that some of their rights are 
invaded. 

(e) Hence in all communities where polit- 
ical and social freedom have found scope, the 
sentiment on behalf of the public school, 
definitely severed from ecclesiastical control 
and directed wholly by State officials, finds 
increasing support. In such communities 
the churches which have broken loose from 
older institutions cease to seek control over 
the weekday schools, and are content to 



110 THE SCHOOL 

maintain a hold over the Family through 
voluntary effort in Sunday-schools; the cleric 
himself tends to become more of a citizen, 
mixing as an equal with his fellow-men; and 
it is found possible for sects differing widely 
in theological basis to unite in ethical ideals, 
and even to unite, for the limited purposes of 
the School, on a common basis of religious 
profession. Thus we witness in Great Britain, 
as in newer countries, the wide adoption of 
an "undenominational" system where the 
rites and ceremonies specific to the sect are 
distinguished from what is more universal, 
and this attracts the great majority by the 
evidence of tolerance and charity. It seems 
to answer the needs of the child just because 
it presents to his notice what is simple and 
general rather than the particular and occult. 
Thus, by the stress of circumstances, a special 
type of homogeneity has been created which 
serves over a large area of the English- 
speaking race to bridge the gulf between 
Church and State, between Family and 
School. The Bible can be read, not as an 
ecclesiastical authority but as a fount of 
sacred literature, honoured alike by all the 
churches; hymns can be sung, not as the 
distinctive possession of one Church, but as 
expressing the sentiments of all. 

Such exercises, of course, are of little value 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 111 

where they become merely an official form, 
but their value to the School society is great, 
simply because they may help the child to 
bridge the gulf between morals and religion, 
between Church and home, between secular 
and divine, between weekday and Sabbath- 
day, The grown man can, of his own motion, 
bridge this gulf. As we have seen already, 
he plays many parts; he can understand, for 
example, that the obligations of ethics apply 
to the counting-house as much as the house of 
prayer; that the voice of God speaks at times 
on the mountain-top when it has forsaken the 
cathedral, that faith and works are often found 
in separate company. But the child cannot 
make these distinctions, and if the statesman, 
pushing this unhappy quarrel with the eccle- 
siastic to the extreme, can accept no com- 
promise between freedom and superstition, 
the danger is imminent of leaving the child- 
mind empty both of aspiration and hope, and 
of the discipline of fear. True, there are many 
men who find that they have "no use for 
religion," and a few who honestly avow that 
they have been deprived of this experience; 
but it is not for them to use the arm of the 
State in order to deprive the coming race of 
such experience. What most men desire is 
not less religion, but more — not that religion 
should be banished from the school, but that 



112 THE SCHOOL 

it should invade the warehouse, the factory, 
and the forum. And it will achieve this 
conquest just so far as its universal elements 
are exposed to children's attention with that 
simplicity and reverence which all men feel 
when they unite in submission to the Unseen 
and the Eternal. 

(/) We have here, I think, outlined at its 
best, the argument that has supported what 
is called " Cowper-Temple religion" since the 
famous School Board Act of 1870, a measure 
which has probably done more to reconcile 
the warring sects of Protestantism in England 
than any direct efforts of the Churches to 
achieve that end. 

But once again we must admit that just 
so far as the majority in Protestant commu- 
nities have welcomed this State policy of 
comprehension, just so far has it disquieted 
those — whether Anglican or Roman Catholic, 
Jew or agnostic — who cannot share in that 
communion. To them the very extension of 
an undenominational system is the denial of 
the first principles of faith. Hence, therefore, 
in addition to a tolerant support of separatist 
schools, where the size of a distinctive popula- 
tion may warrant such a plan, the demand 
for "right of entry" into the public school 
seems justified. No doubt it is injurious to 
the harmony of the school community for the 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 113 

children to be severed week by week into sep- 
arate groups for worship and instruction; but 
the severance is already there, and the child's 
affection for Family, Church, and School will 
not be lessened if he finds agreement to 
differ replacing a spirit of antagonism. But 
if a suggestion may be here attempted, I 
would urge that in place of "right of entry," 
the parent should demand a right of sub- 
stitution. For the proper venue for religious 
instruction is not the public school, with the 
Anglican teaching one group in Room X, and 
the Catholic another group in Room Y; the 
church building, the house of God itself, is 
the fit place of assembly for teaching the 
distinctive doctrines which the Church holds 
dear. And the clergyman himself is the fittest 
teacher, not the public school teacher who, 
in these unhappy controversies, finds his 
allegiance divided between Church and State. 
It would surely not be difficult for the law to 
recognize "attendance" once or more during 
the school week in church buildings. Already 
school children are sent to swimming-baths 
and to playfields under public auspices; it 
would be almost as easy to organize a plan for 
attendance at the ministrations of the clergy 
when parents made a request to that effect. 
And I, for one, should not hesitate to vote 
public money to facilitate such arrangements, 



114 THE SCHOOL 

so long as they were conducted with efficiency; 
such influences are at least as much a part 
of education as instruction in swimming or 
cookery. And even if the positive result of 
such occasions seemed to be small, even 
though official educators might cavil at the 
amateur efforts of the clergy, such criticism 
would be of small moment compared with the 
profounder effects on children's minds in 
finding reconciliation between religion and 
the secular arm. If to this modern world, 
rent as it is with the passions of religion 
and of race, the hope of peace, whether in 
politics or religion, seems remote, something 
at least is gained if the coming race are 
from early childhood taught>Jby the example 
of public tolerance to honour not only the 
majesty of the State but the faith of their 
fathers. 

There is, happily, much evidence to hand 
that public men, both in the churches and in 
the field of politics, are ready to accept such 
efforts at compromise, and thus in countries 
such as England, where habits of spiritual 
freedom forbid the simpler solution of a 
homogeneous community, a finer solution 
can be sought; the unity of civic life may 
be secured amid, families widely divided in 
social and religious sympathies. 

3. Without pursuing further these conflicts, 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 115 

which are indeed as much a matter of politics 
as of education, it will be more profitable, 
assuming the overlordship of the State, to 
review the functions which it discharges and 
see how far rational principles can be dis- 
cerned which will assist rather than retard 
the achievement of those aims which we 
discussed in Chapter IV. 

We have hitherto spoken in general terms 
of "The State," and it should be noted that 
we cannot find any precise dividing line 
which will indicate where a central authority 
should control or where a subordinate local 
authority shall assert its independence. In 
this, as in all departments of State, the deci- 
sion has to be made not on a priori grounds, 
but by taking account of racial customs and 
inherited attitudes towards government. The 
only guiding rule seems to be to approve 
any division of function which works. All 
that can be definitely stated is that the cen- 
tral authority should deal with what is the 
common concern of all, while the local rulers 
can with better effect apply the general to the 
particular; that the central authority should 
be especially concerned, with its ampler 
resources, to secure the best experience, 
and to place the results of its investigations 
at the disposal of the localities. We can 
say further that it is a prime duty of the 



116 THE SCHOOL 

legislature, when distributing duties between 
central and local authorities, to prevent over- 
lapping and rivalry, so as to eliminate waste 
and enable the schools to do their real work 
with the smoothest and simplest mechanism. 
Indeed, the hindrances to efficiency created 
by the multiplication of administrators lead 
many people to urge the abolition of local 
jurisdiction and to devise a simpler form of 
control, handling the schools like the post 
and telegraph service, with the teachers as 
departmental clerks and H. M. Inspectors as 
school managers. The objection to such a 
system arises not from any belief in the 
superior wisdom of local authorities, but 
from the distinctive nature of the educative 
process. School, as we have seen, is an 
institution, a permanent society, and, except 
in the case of boarding schools, its life is 
closely in touch with the locality where it is 
established. 

For social life cannot be maintained 
worthily with a machinery which suits the 
needs of telegraphy or sanitation. As Pro- 
fessor Geldart has recently shown in the case 
of trade unions, any permanent institution 
tends to take shape as a "personality," with 
idiosyncrasies of tone and sympathy. Hence, 
in my view, every type of school, from the 
university down to the humblest infant 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 117 

school, needs for its best development some 
form of local management by a small group 
of people whose interests lie in that commu- 
nity. Such management differs, on the one 
hand, from the official internal control by 
the principal and staff of teachers, and, on 
the other hand, from the control of a local 
board which in England, as in America, takes 
oversight of a large number of institutions. 
Our English school law still assumes that a 
body of managers is in existence for each 
institution, and in the case of non-provided 
elementary schools, and of endowed secondary 
schools, they not only exist, but wield a con- 
trol which in the opinion of many is too 
extensive. I share this opinion, but at the 
same time it is a grave misfortune that the 
rivalries between Church and State have led 
to the practical abolition of managing com- 
mittees in "provided " schools. In other parts 
of Europe similar conditions have produced a 
like effect: the common school originally 
fostered by the local clergy, Protestant or 
Catholic, gains so much from the material 
and intellectual resources of a central author- 
ity that the assistance of a local committee is 
often held to be superfluous. It is only in 
America, where in all departments of govern- 
ment local autonomy is jealously guarded, 
that a different situation exists. Mr. Bryce, 



118 THE SCHOOL 

in The American Commonwealth, points out 
that "to-day in the south as previously in the 
north and west, the school is becoming the 
nucleus of local self-government. " But even 
here the centre of interest is not the individual 
school, but the unit area of local authority, 
within which, as population grows, more 
schools than one are required. So that in the 
large cities of America we have the same situa- 
tion as in Europe, i. e. a system of schools 
managed from a central bureau, with little or 
no autonomy for the single school community. 
I venture to dwell upon this point because, 
except Professor Rein of Jena, I know of no 
writer who has felt it to be worthy of atten- 
tion. Teachers fight shy of it because they 
are already encompassed with too many 
masters; bureaucrats from the opposite side 
of the fence are equally disposed to be impa- 
tient at what they would regard as an inter- 
ference. It is only when special situations 
arise such as that now presented in London 
under the recent Acts for children's care, that 
the need is acutely felt for that personal 
interest in the social life of the school which 
is the distinctive task to be assigned to a 
managing committee. Where, as in London, 
the physical condition and vocational outlook 
of a mass of children have become well-nigh 
hopeless, it becomes clear to every one that 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 119 

the scholastic machinery of instruction sub- 
stitutes stones for bread. Any one who visits, 
for example, the School Settlement, so de- 
votedly founded and conducted by the head 
teacher of the Fern Street Infant School in a 
London slum, readily appreciates the value 
of school managers, or of a small body of 
persons serving the same purpose, i. e. as 
guides, and, if need be, overseers of the 
institution. 

Now the principle here exposed is of uni- 
versal application. If it is serviceable where 
the children need free meals and medicine, 
it applies equally to the higher needs of the 
community; and although to the present 
generation of teachers and officials this argu- 
ment is unacceptable, I adhere to it as an 
article of faith based on personal experience 
as well as on investigation. Just so far 
as the School is realized as a community, 
with its fringe of neighbouring families linked 
to it by the precious ties which childhood and 
youth create, just so far will this principle 
gain acceptance. In the present materialistic 
age we are content to place the organization 
of schools on a cash basis: "He who pays 
the piper," we say, "calls the tune," hence 
the agents of the taxpayers, at headquarters, 
and the agents of the ratepayers, at Whitehall, 
claim sole authority; but in due time it will 



120 THE SCHOOL 

be admitted that those who contribute their 
own children to the School have a right to 
some voice in its affairs: children are a more 
precious contribution than gold. Indeed, the 
administrators themselves will be compelled 
in due time to foster and welcome such com- 
munity interest, for ratepayers and taxpayers 
are always distrustful of expenditure which 
shows so little "result." The burden of 
education rates increases enormously with 
each decade, and it will only be borne with 
equanimity when the people at large who 
receive the benefit are closely allied with the 
machinery of control. 

Limits of space again forbid discussion 
of the manifold ways in which this element 
can be maintained in an educational system; 
we can merely formulate the principle, viz. 
that in every grade of education, the unit of 
government should not be a geographical 
area, but the school community itself. In 
the highest grade of institution — college or 
university — the same principle is at work, 
although it takes a different form. Here it is 
not the parents, but the "Old Boys," the 
body of former students whose sentiments of 
regard for Alma Mater maintain the continu- 
ous life of the society, and serve to uphold its 
prestige among an entire people. The ex- 
traordinary development of State universities 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 121 

in the middle states of America affords a 
capital example. The earliest of these founda- 
tions, that of Ann Arbor, supplying the needs 
of the great State of Michigan, is at the pres- 
ent moment relying upon its association of 
alumni, 30,000 in number, to renew among 
the people at large the sense of obligation to 
this instrument of State advancement. No 
wonder that in such communities pecuniary 
aid is afforded with a goodwill of which we 
in Europe have little conception. 

4. A brief review must suffice to mark off 
the functions which authorities, of one type 
or another, have to fulfil in every educational 
system. At the outset the various grades of 
institution have to be classified and grouped. 
The classification should embrace not only 
those within the public system, but those of 
every rank which contribute to the national 
welfare, including all forms of private enter- 
prise, not neglecting even home tuition, 
which has its part to play even where public 
provision is most elaborate and efficient. The 
English law is sometimes interpreted as if 
parents are breaking the law when, under 
proper safeguards, they personally undertake 
the instruction of their offspring. 

Now while it is the plain duty of the State 
to see to it that fit opportunities for schooling 
are open to every one, it is by no means its 



122 THE SCHOOL 

duty, either as central or local authority, to 
grasp the entire control and management. 
As regards central authorities, at Whitehall 
or elsewhere, the opposite rule is much the 
safer. It is a fortunate situation in England 
that only one or two institutions are now 
actually administered by the Board of Educa- 
tion, and it is at least worth while to consider 
whether local authorities should not follow 
the same policy, i. e. to co-ordinate, to inspect, 
and to support, but to refrain wherever 
possible from actually managing the details 
of an institution. The larger the population 
under the control of an authority, the less 
efficient is it likely to be in such management. 
When a local authority pursues the opposite 
policy, and attempts from its own resources 
to provide all types of school within its 
area, the mischief is twofold: it ceases to 
take a comprehensive and sympathetic over- 
sight of non-official enterprises, and it pre- 
sents its own institutions in rivalry to these. 
The hardest lesson which public authorities, 
both national and provincial, have to learn is 
to recognize varied efforts put forth in the 
educational field by voluntary and non-official 
enthusiasm. 

So much for the spirit in which public 
authorities should undertake to review the 
needs of a community. The principles on 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 123 

which the different types of school are dis- 
tinguished require separate treatment and are 
reserved for Chapter VII. When a school 
is defined and established, the next step in 
organization is to procure the teacher. We 
postpone this topic also, since the status and 
qualifications of the teaching body are of 
capital importance; the efficiency of an 
educational system can indeed be quite well 
estimated from the appreciation which the 
community shows of those whom it engages 
in the service of the schools. 

5. The oversight of the State does not 
cease with the appointment of the teacher. 

(a) Attendance. — While refraining from in- 
terference in the technique of the teacher's 
craft, the State is bound to see that in 
general terms the aims proposed are achieved. 
Thus the scholars must be present; in the 
elementary school their attendance must, 
if need be, be enforced; in the secondary 
school and college, the opposite rule should 
prevail and the State should see to it that 
the idle and indifferent are excluded. We have 
already noticed, in discussing the origins of 
School, that the temptations to leisure which 
an extended schooling affords cannot be 
resisted by all boys and girls. The recent 
expansion of secondary schooling in Great 
Britain, in spite of its undoubted benefit, 



124 THE SCHOOL 

has no doubt brought this evil in its train, 
and it is for the State to assist the teachers 
to cope with it. 

(6) The British Examination System. — The 
exit of the scholar from the school society 
is no less a matter requiring expert control in 
the public interest. In this field the German 
states have set an example to the world at 
large; the far-seeing statesmen who, early in 
the nineteenth century, re-cast the education 
of their people, foresaw that the best incen- 
tive to industry at school would be to train 
the people to appreciate a Leaving Cer- 
tificate (Abiturienten-Zeugniss) which would 
attest that the scholar had lived the school 
life year by year and passed out of the 
society with the "course" complete. Much 
as the Anglo-Saxon race, with its keen 
sense of personal freedom, may distrust the 
Germanic system of culture, here at any 
rate we can learn from them; there is no 
more striking example of the difference be- 
tween efficiency and clumsy failure than to 
contrast what is called the English examina- 
tion system with that of Germany. No 
doubt, under the primitive conditions which 
prevailed fifty years ago, the College of Pre- 
ceptors and the Universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge with their Local Examinations, 
and the University of London with its degree 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 125 

system, rendered a real service in founding 
their machinery for distributing printed 
papers and marking the answers; the plan 
undoubtedly incited teachers and scholars to 
work; it helped to standardize the schools 
and gave opportunities for scholastic ambition 
which, in the absence of a better system, were 
welcome; and in times when the credit of 
teachers was low, and their own sense of 
responsibility defective, it was essential that 
some trustworthy and impartial judge should 
be called in to give a testimony which the 
public could trust. The system owed its 
success to the development of transit facili- 
ties through the railways, which had recently 
been invented; it seemed a great thing to be 
able to examine at the same moment John 
Smith in Surrey and Mary Sykes in North- 
umberland, and within a few weeks to pro- 
duce a reliable percentage as assessment of 
their efficiency. This machinery was power- 
fully aided by the rapid cheapening of books 
and paper, enabling scholars to prepare for 
these examinations on the exact lines required; 
and the result is an all-embracing method of 
assessment which is applied, with the preci- 
sion which any such machine can display, to 
every field where the public requires evidence 
of scholastic attainments. It has "reformed " 
the Civil Service; it has certificated millions 



126 THE SCHOOL 

of young people for commerce, for hygiene, 
for art, and it supplies the chief test by which 
students are admitted to our universities. 
And since 1902 many local authorities, in- 
cluding London, have applied the machine, 
often in the crudest fashion, to select children 
of capacity, by thousands and tens of thou- 
sands, giving them scholarships and main- 
tenance for further education. Nor is its 
influence confined to Great Britain; several 
of the United States follow a similar plan, 
notably the State of New York, and, in 
Canada, the great province of Ontario. A 
system so powerfully entrenched, creating 
such large vested interests, has been able to 
defy criticism, for it is trusted by the general 
public, which is glad to secure a rough-and- 
ready method where favouritism can have 
no place. 

But efforts have not been wanting to 
modify, if not to overturn, the operation of 
the machine. The system of inspection insti- 
tuted by the Board of Education has at least 
established an alternative mode for assessing 
the efficiency of the secondary school; the 
Regents of New York State and the Board 
constituted for Wales under the Intermediate 
Education Act have made gallant efforts to 
minimize the evils of wholesale examination, 
while the London University is endeavouring 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 127 

by a plan for School Leaving Certificates to 
overcome them from another point of view. 
But it is evident that the situation can only 
be met by State authority, i. e. by the com- 
bined wisdom of expert investigation whose 
results would command the adhesion of the 
entire country. This is a task for which a 
consultative committee such as we have 
described above is eminently fitted, and it is 
understood that the Board of Education has 
recently set its Committee to work upon this 
problem, or upon certain aspects of it. 

What, then, is the criticism which leads us 
to deplore the continuance of this primitive 
machine? It is found to be injurious in two 
points, each of them involving matters which 
are essential to efficiency in the educational 
product. First, as a test of attainment it is 
incompetent, for it is one-sided, lending itself 
readily to mathematics, but most imperfectly 
to practical work: it can test a writer to 
the disadvantage of a thinker; it encourages 
a rapid memory and discourages deliberate 
attainment. It has delayed for years in 
countless schools the introduction of improved 
methods of teaching, simply because its 
awkward machinery could not adapt itself to 
new requirements. Thus when in the eighties 
chemistry first began to be taught in second- 
ary schools the present writer recollects the 



128 THE SCHOOL 

little packets of white compound that were 
sent to his school along with many others, in 
order to serve as a test of boys' mastery of 
chemical ideas; most people, at least the 
chemists, knew that this device would cripple 
the teaching, but it was the best that Oxford 
and Cambridge could do under the system. 
In course of time improvements were made, 
but the root of the trouble has remained; good 
teachers of science can secure results and 
distinctions for their pupils, but they con- 
tinue to lament the sacrifice that is involved. 
Literature and Modern Languages are hin- 
dered quite as seriously, for in these the ear 
and tongue are in request as much as pen and 
paper. The defenders of the system some- 
times reply that the art of acquiring and then 
disgorging the contents of a text-book is 
valuable, and should be encouraged; but the 
reply is not germane to the issue. 

The injury extends beyond the curriculum. 
A certificate, to be of value, should certify 
not only to the attainments of a scholar at 
one critical moment, but it should testify 
that he has lived the school life, and should 
by its comprehensive character take account 
of the entire school record. When a German 
inspector, acting as school examiner, inquires 
into the attainments of the older scholars, 
and, along with the teachers, awards a Leav- 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 129 

ing Certificate, he is not a mere marking 
machine, but a free intelligence, coming into 
personal contact with both the candidates 
and their instructors; his long experience 
gives him an adequate acquaintance with 
the public standard, but he supplements his 
own judgment by the opinion of the staff of 
the school, who are trusted by public opinion 
in Germany with a confidence which at 
present is withheld in Great Britain. 

This leads to the second and more funda- 
mental indictment of the system, viz. that 
it cripples the initiative of the teacher. As 
we pointed out, this criticism has little 
relevance to primitive days, when no re- 
sponsible teaching body exists; but the 
time is long past in England when teachers 
should be content to follow a uniform syl- 
labus, and to copy the devices which are 
entailed by the distribution of simultaneous 
examination papers. Thus in the teaching 
of English Literature, the State of New 
York selects twelve poems for each school 
year, "of which at least six should be mem- 
orized." The selection is quite admirable, 
but the scholars would be more likely to 
benefit if the teacher were encouraged to 
investigate children's poetry for herself. Our 
English Board of Education prescribes that 
every college student preparing to be a 



130 THE SCHOOL 

teacher shall learn at least two hundred lines 
of poetry; it does not indicate the poems, 
but it employs men of distinction to spend 
valuable time in hearing these young men and 
women say their pieces. If the college were 
left free to train each student according to his 
needs, and the inspectors were free to treat 
each syllabus and each situation on its merits, 
it is likely that the true interests of our native 
tongue would be better safeguarded. Some of 
our universities exercise an even stricter con- 
trol, for they not only prescribe the authors, 
but publish and sell approved editions, and so 
relieve the teacher of responsibility for the 
comment as well as for the text. If this 
illustration be extended, it will be seen that 
the issue is fundamental simply because the 
freedom of the teacher within his own prov- 
ince is as vital to progress as his submission 
to authority outside his province. And in this 
profession above all, where theory is as yet 
so scanty, the hope of progress depends 
largely upon fostering a spirit of independent 
activity. The progress so far attained in 
England has been made in spite of the system, 
and the time is ripe for radical amendment. 
It is important to press home the impor- 
tance of this difficult problem, for the layman 
does not yet recognize the far-reaching bene- 
fits which a sound system of Leaving Cer- 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 131 

tificates, extended from the primary school 
upwards, can exert upon the education of a 
nation. Such certificates are not only of 
value as affecting the progress of a scholar 
from one type of school to another. Their 
chief value is to the laity, to the employer, 
who, on the Continent, looks to the school 
record as reliable evidence of capacity. If 
supervised and endorsed by State authority, 
combined with a system of inspection, these 
certificates would shortly lead to such an 
appreciation of the school programme as 
would encourage scholars not merely to pass 
an examination, but to complete from begin- 
ning to end the course of education for which 
each type of school is specifically designed. 

6. We have now indicated the chief prob- 
lems which should engage the attention of 
organizing authorities: when these are seen 
to there still remains the provision of ways 
and means; the receipt and expenditure of 
moneys; the acquisition of land; the erection 
and maintenance of buildings; the supply of 
apparatus. In some countries, including 
England, great attention is also paid to pro- 
vision for the payment of successful scholars 
in order to enable them to pursue a further 
course of schooling; and, still more recently, 
the provision of food or clothing to children 
whose forlorn condition is brought sharply 



132 THE SCHOOL 

into notice by the very fact of their attend- 
ance. A few notes must suffice on some of 
the topics here presented. 

The Education Budget. — As regards the 
general expenditure on education, public or 
private, no limit can be assigned, and it is 
useless to exclaim that the budget of national 
or local expenditure "increases by leaps and 
bounds." The amount that a family or a 
nation will expend upon its children is just 
as much as it can afford: the coming race 
demands no less and can expect no more. 
The outlay, for example, on administration 
has immensely increased in Great Britain 
and Ireland during the last decade, but few 
will be inclined to cavil at the effective serv- 
ices rendered by the multiplied officials and 
inspectors who guide the policy of the schools. 
Salaries have increased, not beyond the 
current increase in the cost of living, but they 
are likely to increase still more; the nation 
at large will have no jealousy on this score, 
if they find that the nation's children secure 
the direction of teachers who devote their 
lives to the national service. 

The expenditure on land and buildings has 
progressed at a rate which some deem to be 
extravagant: but it has only kept pace with 
the improvement in domestic hygiene and 
architecture which is a characteristic of the 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 133 

present generation. A word of caution may, 
however, be here ventured. Lay authorities 
are, as a rule, willing to expend upon build- 
ings and equipment, because they appear to 
be getting something for their money: tax- 
payers can see a fine building and point to it 
with pride. When one undertakes an educa- 
tional tour it is commonly this external pro- 
vision that one is invited to observe: one's 
hosts are apt to be disappointed if the visitor 
turns away from these structures and spends 
his time in examining the real thing. Hence 
it is worth while for public authorities to 
inquire whether a fixed proportion should 
not be measured between the various items 
of expenditure, for fear lest the gorgeous 
temple should house unworthy service. Cer- 
tain it is that some of the finest fruits of 
teaching have been garnered, both in these 
and in earlier days, from school buildings 
which the most indulgent of inspectors would 
condemn. 

In this connection it is interesting to notice 
an inquiry which is being conducted, we 
believe, at this moment, by the Board of 
Education as to the wisdom of erecting 
structures of a more temporary nature than 
has been usual. For it is evident that the 
needs of equipment alter so rapidly as to make 
any building more than thirty years of age 



134 THE SCHOOL 

unfitted for modern requirements. Instead of 
putting the money into stone and bricks, to 
say nothing of architectural ornament, if the 
first thought were given to securing ample 
space in land, the expenditure would be well 
repaid. For children, old and young, need 
space and air: if you once get the land, you 
can put anything on it and remove anything 
from it. The movements now on foot, espe- 
cially in great cities, for open-air lessons, for 
gardening employment, and for field games 
will undoubtedly increase the demand for 
land, and is already leading to a closer 
co-operation between those who provide parks 
for adults and those who provide closed 
buildings for children. The earlier policy 
was to plant schools in the centre of popula- 
tion, crowding up still more the congested 
area: the new policy of town planning will 
lead to the acquirement of large areas which 
may serve the locality not only during the 
hours of school but during all the hours of 
daylight. In the United States an interest- 
ing movement is afoot to utilize the school- 
building and grounds "as a social centre" 
enabling "the people" to meet there for 
recreation and for culture instead of closing 
the doors to both children and adults when 
lessons are over. In this way the maximum 
of benefit to a locality can be secured from 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 135 

the heavy expenditure which a modern school 
building entails. 

The Educational Ladder, — The generous 
expenditure in this country on maintenance 
scholarships always excites the surprise of 
foreigners who visit our schools, and they are 
right in attributing it, especially in its modern 
form as dispensed by local authorities, to 
the general democratic tendency. While 
England shares with other European nations 
the maintenance of traditional class dis- 
tinctions, it is distinguished by constant 
efforts to enable the individual of capacity 
to advance from one group to another: the 
scholarship system is one mode of making 
this advance easy. True enough the argu- 
ment is not openly stated in these terms, for 
our legislature recognizes no distinction of 
class; the principle, in logical form, is that 
of equality of opportunity unhampered by 
poverty or family exigencies. But this prin- 
ciple is also supported by another distinctively 
English trait — the determination to select 
the best talent and foster it, even at the 
expense of those of mediocre gifts. (We shall 
see this same tendency in operation in the 
following chapter when we consider the 
principles under which types of school are 
differentiated.) These two tendencies in com- 
bination account for the excessive attention 



136 THE SCHOOL 

which has been paid, especially since the Act 
of 1902, by our local authorities to the pro- 
vision of scholarships. Directors and secre- 
taries of committees, impelled by popular 
pressure, have spent their best energies in 
devising such schemes when they might have 
been better employed on other parts of their 
duty such as we have discussed above. For 
it is evident from the practice of other demo- 
cracies, notably Switzerland and America, 
that the educational ladder can be adequately 
supported on other methods. When once the 
fees charged for higher education have been 
reduced to a nominal level, the American 
educator thinks he has done enough, and 
considers that ambitious boys, if they lack 
the funds to maintain themselves while at 
high school or college, will be best educated 
by being required to earn what is needed. 
Hence in every type of educational institution 
above the primary school (and here Canada 
may be reckoned with the United States), 
scholars will be found engaged in employ- 
ments — from domestic and hotel service to 
typewriting, teaching, lecturing — in order to 
find the wherewithal to equip themselves 
for a professional career. As a^ method of 
climbing the ladder, this plan is as much 
systematized and officially recognized by 
universities and colleges as is our scholarship 



ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 137 

system in Great Britain; and while the pro- 
found differences, both economic and social, 
between old and new countries forbid us to 
imitate in detail, we must at least admit that 
self-reliance is fostered by this American 
plan. A man who has paid his way is more 
likely to appreciate what he has paid for 
with personal sacrifice. And while, no doubt, 
advancement to the highest standards of 
learning is hindered or delayed by serving 
as waiter or office clerk, these occupy no more 
time than the distractions found necessary 
by our leisured classes to relieve the tedium 
of learning, while they afford the student 
an insight into some practical conditions of 
the work-a-day world which may contribute 
somewhat to redress the balance between the 
culture of the academy and the vulgarity 
of the market-place. 

While, therefore, it would be a mistake to 
depreciate the motives which have led us in 
England to erect our special shape of educa- 
tional ladder, it would seem that the methods 
employed are open to revision. Natural selec- 
tion might be left to operate more freely; 
the educational exchequer would devote itself 
more resolutely to equipping the institutions 
of education to the highest point of effi- 
ciency; it would sustain the standards of 
achievement by pupils and teachers, it would 



138 THE SCHOOL 

reduce to a minimum the fees for all types 
of education, and would then leave the pecu- 
niary needs of "maintenance" to be met 
from unofficial resources, or from any surplus 
that remains after the essential things in 
schooling have been adequately sustained. 



CHAPTER VII 

TYPES OF SCHOOL — WITH SOME REFERENCE 
TO UNIVERSITIES 

1. When it is sought to interest the "man 
in the street" in the study of education, he 
is always baffled by our attempts to explain 
the difference between one type of school and 
another. He can understand the pressure 
of a school tax; he can appreciate the claim 
of the clergy to influence education policy; 
he sympathizes with the ambition of a poor 
boy to win a scholarship, but he stumbles 
when set to explain, let us say, the difference 
between secondary and technical education. 
Indeed, the wisest of men tread with caution 
in this labyrinth. The famous Bryce Com- 
mission of 1895, whose labours mark an 
epoch in the history of English education 
published many chapters on the subject of 
their inquiry before they grappled with the 
initial difficulty of their task, and then, in 
answer to the formal question What is 
Secondary Education? they subscribed to a 
dissertation which added to the perplexity. 

139 



140 THE SCHOOL 

The difficulty arises from the nature of 
things — from the variety of human needs, 
and the novel means devised by schools to 
meet these needs as they assume new shapes. 
We shall therefore not attempt to expose a 
co-ordinated scheme of institutions, but to 
indicate some of the forces which, as a 
matter of fact, determine the forms in which 
the schools are moulded. We may picture 
these forces in a connected line of thought 
somewhat as follows: looking at the needs 
of the scholar as really if not ostensibly 
deciding the type of institution organized 
for his reception, we can distinguish the 
Present, the Past, and the Future: by the 
Present we mean the scholar's powers as 
indicated by the stage of growth which he 
has reached; his Past is the stock of culture 
and experience which he brings with him 
from inheritance and social environment; his 
Future takes into account the part he has to 
play in life when school has done with him. 
We will take these three points of view in 
succession. 

2. We have already noted, in Chapter IV, 
a series of epochs in personal development 
from infancy to adult life, and these afford us a 
succession of schools — kindergarten, primary, 
secondary, college — each covering one stage, 
with a community life and atmosphere, with 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 141 

a type of teacher and equipment adapted to 
the needs of the subject — infant, child, pupil, 
student, in due order. This is the logical 
scheme of things, and its simplicity commends 
itself to the organizer. He can plan a curric- 
ulum for stage A which will open on to stage 
B, and then to C and D, and the ease with 
which curricula can be devised and conducted 
on this basis makes this classification fatally 
mischievous when accepted as an exclusive 
principle of administration. For it tacitly 
assumes that the completion of all the stages 
should be the accepted goal for all scholars: 
that schooling right through to the com- 
pletion of a university course should be the 
ambition of every human being, and that 
State policy in the differentiation of types 
should be governed on that principle alone. 
We have already combated this view in 
the introductory chapters and need not re- 
capitulate the argument. The study of the 
stages of growth should not lead us to erect 
a ladder which is of value only to the few who 
reach the top, but rather urge us to afford for 
each stage of development its appropriate 
institution, with a curriculum and corporate 
life culminating in its own achievement, 
without regard to the entrance requirements 
of the ensuing stages. Thus before the 
stages of adolescence there are the two periods 



142 THE SCHOOL 

of the infant school extending to six or 
seven years, and the primary school from 
eight to twelve, which appear to be well 
defined; and each of these should be treated 
as a separate "institution" whether or no 
they are conducted in distinct buildings. 
When we turn to the years of adolescence, 
greater difficulty is encountered, partly be- 
cause with increasing years individual differ- 
ences are more pronounced, partly because 
these differences are increased as between 
different nations and different social groups 
in the same nation. Thus a boy of fourteen 
on an Australian farm is often more adult in 
many respects than a German student of 
twenty, although in powers of abstract 
thought the latter will be far ahead of the 
former. But in general terms we can say 
that the ages from thirteen to seventeen con- 
stitute a period of life which is self-contained, 
and that the period from seventeen to twenty- 
two can be adequately distinguished from it. 
The differences of outlook and sympathy 
between these two stages is sufficiently 
pronounced, although a fair number of 
individuals will be found in the second stage 
of adolescence at an earlier period than the 
average, while there are also a fair proportion 
whose slower development indicates that they 
should be kept at the secondary school as 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 143 

long as possible before going on to college. 
The administrator has to bear in mind that 
both secondary school and college are insti- 
tutions where the mental outlook of the 
scholars shapes itself consciously towards 
adult life and independence. While still at 
school the youth is ready to accept strong and 
despotic control: the college regime should 
imply a relaxation in the outward form of 
control while still retaining for the tutor a 
sense of responsibility and a personal interest 
in his charges. It is only after the age of 
twenty-one, in the years of advanced study at 
universities, that the relation between teacher 
and taught can be accepted on both sides as 
one of mutual independence. (Comp. p. 75 
above.) 

Some such series of types of school based on 
the stages of growth underlies, with variation 
in details, the system adopted in all civilized 
countries, but by itself it tends to a mechanical 
rigidity which leads to grave evils. It assumes 
that the average scholar will proceed steadily 
through each grade of instruction, promoted 
session by session to a higher grade along with 
those of like standing, until the "course" 
of the institution is completed. In fact, it 
implicitly ignores variations of native capac- 
ity, or differences arising from interruptions to 
normal progress. The public system should 



144 THE SCHOOL 

provide a course of study adapted to the 
average powers of large numbers; this is 
offered objectively to each individual and he 
is assumed to go through it, whether he be 
exceptionally gifted and therefore able to 
progress more rapidly, or be hindered in 
the race and thus perpetually fall behind. 
Speaking generally, it may be said that all 
national systems where huge numbers are 
congregated in class-rooms suffer from this 
evil; that it shows itself most in grades be- 
yond the primary, since the older the scholar 
the more pronounced are the individual 
differences; and that as regards nationalities 
England has the merit of having paid most 
regard to the needs of the more gifted pupils : 
with us emphatically the doctrine has held 
that "to him that hath shall be given." 

At this moment in the United States genu- 
ine alarm is felt at the neglect for capacity 
involved in the public system. Formerly any 
attempt to foster individual talent was re- 
buked as "undemocratic," but it is now 
coming to be held that the republic suffers 
from the lack of men of outstanding power, 
and that the public system is to blame for the 
suppression of this resource. For the boy or 
girl who possesses precocious qualities, to 
whom the average work of his grade is little 
more than child's play, readily falls into idle 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 145 

habits, or, finding that the occupations of the 
class-room are not "good enough" to engage 
his powers, he "quits schooling" and seeks 
a more adequate sphere for his abilities. If 
the elaborate educational systems of Conti- 
nental Europe do not illustrate the same 
process to the same extent, reasons are to 
hand which account for the discrepancy. 
The result in America is shown at this moment 
in the "Baltimore plan" and parallel devices 
adopted elsewhere to cope with the mischief: 
distinct types of school are set on foot not 
only for the subnormal, but, to repeat the no- 
menclature of Chapter V, for the supranormal. 
As regards the subnormal or backward 
child, our legislatures have now for a long 
time admitted the need for segregation, and 
have established schools of a separate type 
for defectives; but in some communities it has 
been discovered that it is a wise economy to 
arrange separate teaching for those who fall 
behind the average in certain lines of response 
without displaying such deficiency as demands 
their being classed as "defective." Thus the 
city of Cleveland has recently taken advan- 
tage of the long summer vacation customary 
in the United States to meet this situation: 
its public elementary schools are kept open 
through the entire summer, and those who 
need to make up their deficiencies are required 



146 THE SCHOOL 

to attend for the four quarters of the year 
instead of three. The plan has been adopted, 
we are told, after a careful financial inquiry, 
which proved that this additional expenditure 
in the summer would not only increase the 
efficiency of the school system, but would 
actually save money. Similar plans adopted 
in Germany, in Diisseldorf and elsewhere, are 
also being watched with interest. 

There is an obvious danger in all such 
schemes about which parents on their chil- 
dren's behalf are more apt to be sensitive 
than teachers. If the backward scholar is too 
openly segregated to an inferior rank, he loses 
his self-respect and responds unwillingly to 
the efforts made on his behalf: it is the first 
duty of those who establish separate classes 
to make clear that these distinctions are made 
not from contempt for stupidity, but from 
real sympathy with differences. The scholar 
who at present is of slow capacity, or is held 
back by circumstances, may forge ahead of 
his contemporaries if helped by wise organiza- 
tion; in any event, it should be made clear 
that scholastic merit is only one standard by 
which men's qualities are to be measured. 

3. Thus by considering merely the scholar 
per se 9 at his present stage of growth and 
with his native endowment, we can fore- 
shadow the outline of a scheme of schools 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 147 

arranged in systematic relations, but we have 
now to notice that the children, especially in 
an old-established community, are distin- 
guished by their Past, i. e. by the varieties of 
culture and social environment. It would be 
easy for the present writer to omit reference 
to this point, for it is notoriously a theme 
which arouses resentment in many minds, 
but our task is to indicate the fact, viz. the 
forces that are at work in people's minds in 
the differentiation of types of school. The 
fact here is that many families, either by the 
acquirement of wealth or by devotion to 
ideals, attain a standard of culture by which 
they set great store, let it be the merest social 
veneer or the more solid attributes of sound 
taste, whether associated with a "smart set," 
with a genteel suburb, or an historic reli- 
gious society. Now every such family, as a 
stock, prizes these elements as a valuable part 
of education, and is solicitous that schooling 
shall promote their continuance, or at the 
least shall not destroy them. There are, for 
example, thousands of English families, from 
the humble homes where sixpence a week 
is paid for entrance to a "non-provided" 
school up to those of historic stock whose 
sons attend the great "Public Schools," where 
this force is seen at work, and although, as we 
have already noticed, the legislature cannot 



148 THE SCHOOL 

assist the organization of schools on this 
basis, it is folly to attempt to rule out the 
impulse as inimical to progress. For this 
force it was which first led parents to commit 
their offspring to the charge of tutors : a good 
stock, conscious of its worth, seeks to preserve 
its identity and perpetuate its qualities not 
only by breeding, but by nutrition; and 
school provides one mode of environment 
through which manners and ways of life are 
enabled to persist. The working of this force 
in creating diverse types of schools could be 
illustrated at length from all countries of 
Europe; and in the New World as soon as 
a pioneer district loses the homogeneity of 
social conditions by reason of the influx of 
wealth and culture, all sorts of private or 
endowed schools are created, often by religious 
communities, which express the failure of the 
public system to meet a complex situation. 

It is a most delicate task for the adminis- 
trator to regulate the operation of this force 
so as to ensure that minimum of supervision 
which the common interest of the State de- 
mands, and to extend in return just so much 
aid as will encourage the operation of this 
force in its ideal form while preventing it 
from increasing the alienation of class from 
class. For, on the one hand, he knows 
that the progress of mankind depends not 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 149 

upon the perpetuation of exclusive stocks, 
contending for power and privilege, but upon 
mutual acquaintance and sympathy; and, as 
he comes to understand the subtle influences 
of association among the young at school, he 
realizes the permanent effects upon habits of 
life induced during the plastic years of child- 
hood and youth. On the other hand, he fore- 
sees that the very success of a sound educa- 
tional system tends towards selection; those 
who profit most by a cultural environment 
tend to establish a family with novel interests 
and tastes which in a new generation will be 
unwilling to throw its youngsters into the 
melting-pot of the public system. 

The real injury is done when this worthy 
desire for retaining family culture is crossed 
with the opportunities and ambition created 
by wealth. It is here that the crux of the 
situation is presented. The State can well 
afford to countenance the school which is 
selective, if the selection is based either on 
the native capacity of the scholar, or on the 
cultural habits which he brings as a part of 
his family endowment; but when, on a 
society so constituted, scholars are intruded 
on the sole ground that they can pay for 
entrance, when money is used to exploit a 
machinery devised for higher ends, then 
indeed the democratic sense is affronted and 



150 THE SCHOOL 

the State may rightly be charged with main- 
taining one law for the rich and another for 
the poor. But while these sentiments are 
easy to put on paper, their application is far 
from easy : The class of " Get-rich-quicklies " 
can indeed only be commended for desiring 
to acquire quickly a culture which in its finest 
form takes time for proper growth. 

The opposition of sentiment as here out- 
lined accounts for the permanent difficulties 
encountered in the control of English second- 
ary schools: we have the schools fostered 
by religious bodies, the old-endowed grammar 
school supported partly by families of good 
stock and jealous of the intrusion of children 
of inferior breeding; boarding schools com- 
peting keenly with all the rest, and dependent 
more upon the wealth of parents than on the 
gifts of the State; also, since 1902, municipal 
secondary schools appealing to a new civic 
spirit, and, finally, privately-controlled schools 
of all grades of efficiency. We have said little 
to reconcile these rivalries, but a point is 
gained when their competition is reviewed in 
the light of larger motives such as we have 
here reviewed. 

4. But in addition to the family culture 
which lies behind the scholar, we have, finally, 
to consider his Future. True enough, a school 
which cherishes the culture of the past while 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 151 

training the scholar on his present level of 
development is doing much to equip him for 
the future; the phrase "liberal education" 
was indeed adopted to describe a curriculum 
which ignores a man's vocation for the sake 
of larger and deeper needs. Yet we saw, in 
Chapter III, how in very early days types 
of school were established with the direct 
intention of serving the purpose of profes- 
sions and trades; if in modern times a sharp 
antithesis has been discovered between liberal 
and technical education it is only because 
men have failed to see how intimate is the 
alliance between the two; the ends both of 
vocation and of leisure need to be pursued in 
unison, if not always in conjunction. Un- 
doubtedly the "old education," maintained 
in England up to say 1860, neglected the 
realities of life, and often boasted of its 
neglect. Even to-day there exists in certain 
coteries a contempt more or less veiled for 
"bread-and-butter studies," meaning thereby 
such pursuits as do not provide bread and 
butter for the critic. Confined in the cloister 
of his scholastic pursuits, absorbed, as he 
needs must be if faithful to duty, in the 
present life of his scholars, there is little 
incentive to the teacher for observation of 
the after-effect of schooling; and it is little 
wonder that teachers breed their own kind, 



152 THE SCHOOL 

and are seen at their best in creating more 
teachers. Indeed, this criticism is especially 
apt as regards some institutions expressly 
designed for technical instruction, as, for 
example, those offering courses in commercial 
and in domestic sciences : some of these have 
had small influence upon commerce or domes- 
tic life, but they have trained a multitude 
of teachers certified as able to impart such 
instruction. 

It is precisely here that we need to seek 
for further light; we can find little satisfac- 
tion in discussing the question as concerned 
solely with the separate subjects of a curric- 
ulum. The more a single study is treated in 
isolation from a larger scheme of education, 
the less value can it possess either for leisure 
or for vocation; the more closely it is inter- 
woven with other experience and viewed in 
the light of larger issues, the more does its 
pursuit become worth while. And this sug- 
gests one principle which may guide the 
administrator when asked to found a separate 
institution to meet vocational needs. If 
such an institution is founded, it should be 
definitely and organically connected with 
the vocation; those who control it, whether 
as teachers or managers, should have first- 
hand experience in the calling, and the 
scholars should be avowedly embarked in 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 153 

that calling. The Trades School which is now 
being encouraged in England, the Gewerbe 
Schule in Germany, the industrial school in 
America, are likely to achieve their end be- 
cause this principle is being thoroughly ac- 
cepted: the vocation is not thereby reduced 
to a lower level, but its prestige is enhanced, 
simply because the process of interpreting the 
craft involves resort to those branches of 
culture which stand in vital relation to it : the 
craftsman when he teaches his craft is com- 
pelled in due course to become a liberal 
educator. 

The complementary principle needs equal 
emphasis, viz. that an institution for general 
education should abstain from the pretension 
to qualify its scholar for the detailed tasks 
which modern vocations impose upon crafts- 
men and professional men. It should rely 
with confidence upon its ability to foster the 
larger and more comprehensive talents which 
shall aid them, when the time arrives for 
leaving school or college, for rapidly engaging 
on the narrower field which the vocation 
defines. In other words, there is no room for 
the older type of technical school which sacri- 
ficed liberal aims without coming into vital 
contact with the world's business; which pur- 
sued the older traditions of scholastic method, 
with a re-shuffling of the subjects of the time- 



154 THE SCHOOL 

table. This is not to say that there is no room 
for variety in the curricula which the schools 
provide: there may well be a choice of studies 
afforded between which a scholar may "elect" 
so far as the resources of the institution 
extend; but it places the emphasis not on 
the relation of this or that study to the future 
career, but on its relation here and now to the 
general scheme of culture and of school life in 
which the scholar is absorbed. 

By way of illustration: our large secondary 
schools usually offer a choice, at any rate in 
the higher classes, between a curriculum 
mainly classical, mainly scientific and mathe- 
matical, or mainly modern and English (a 
similar variety is provided, in my opinion 
not so wisely, in Germany, by the creation of 
separate types of school; thus the Realschulen 
offer no Latin; the Gymnasien both Latin and 
Greek). The motive of the organizer in 
affording this choice of curricula is to help 
the scholar towards his future vocation; 
thus a lad destined for engineering will pay 
special attention to mathematics. But at 
this stage of his career such considerations 
ought not to have too much weight: the 
influence which his schooling will exert upon 
his vocation will not come mainly from this 
special preparatory attention to mathematics, 
but from his free general growth in an at- 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 155 

mosphere, intellectual and social, which suits 
his nature. We must admit that there are 
many inefficient schools which profess to 
foster such generous growth, and fail to make 
good their promise; but such cases will be 
remedied by improving not merely the 
instruction in mathematics, but the entire 
work of the school. To put this in new 
terms, we hold that for boys and girls whose 
capacity and character are of the right stamp, 
a prolonged experience of general liberal cul- 
ture at school and college is the soundest in- 
troduction to the specialized duties of adult 
life. 

In all schemes of this kind we have to 
admit that vocational training is essentially 
the application of "brains" to practical phe- 
nomena: its quality and range depend ab- 
solutely upon the quality of mind which 
approaches its problems; they can only be 
rightly appreciated in their proper setting, 
as parts of a wider experience. Here, again, 
to him that hath is given; we find for example 
that able boys in London who have had a 
good schooling are offered a shorter period of 
apprenticeship in certain trades, for such an 
apprentice not only gets over the ground in 
shorter time, but with greater efficiency. 

5. With each stage of development the con- 
flicting claims of culture and vocation be- 



156 THE SCHOOL 

come more acute; hence we should now turn 
our attention to the situation as it is presented 
in colleges and universities. A most striking 
example of the worth of a prolonged syste- 
matic training (and of other points discussed 
in this chapter) is afforded by the practice of 
English universities, and especially, perhaps, 
of Oxford, re-shaped during the last genera- 
tion by Jowett and his contemporaries. Un- 
doubtedly there is much of failure — in these 
as in all academies: much that is anti-social 
in its tendency, much that needs reform; but 
our concern is to indicate the ideal of those 
who have worked out a theory into successful 
practice. 

Now Oxford is pre-eminently English in its 
conception of education, because it fosters 
in its own life the competitive spirit: each 
college stands or falls in rivalry with its 
neighbours. English also in its belief in the 
selective principle: it seeks to educate only 
those who can stand the test of its life of 
leisure; and in its preference for those whose 
family culture points them out as likely to 
profit by the special influences of the place. 
Provided with such material, college tutors 
endeavour by personal teaching and oversight 
to produce a definite effect on the individual : 
lectures are less important than essays; 
examinations are very important, not only 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 157 

because of the stimulus, but because, when 
skilfully handled, they form a means of 
gauging ability. This tutorial method can 
be applied to any type of curriculum, for it is 
the training that counts rather than the 
details of knowledge; but, naturally, the 
older humanistic studies, which for centuries 
have been perfected as a pedagogic instru- 
ment, answer more easily to the ideal. It 
will be recognized that this conception of a 
university career differs from that current in 
most parts of the world where the "depart- 
ment" with its professors and lecturers, its 
laboratory and its research apparatus, has 
emerged in modern times as a distinct type of 
institution playing an indispensable part in 
the organization not only of modern industry, 
but of the entire realm of intellectual progress. 
The modern university, in fact, seeks to fulfil 
two disparate functions, and combines in one 
organization two institutions, whose purpose 
should never be confused. As a "college" it 
finds its chief duty in the charge of youth 
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, 
who still require, and respond to, the guidance 
of a professional teacher; its function is much 
like that of the secondary school; although 
it specializes (and, with scholars of this age, 
we must allow ample variety), it subordinates 
the acquirement of mere knowledge to a 



158 THE SCHOOL 

more liberal ideal. But as a congeries of de- 
partments constituting a university it has 
a different aim: for the science which the 
"department" professes is now the principal 
interest, and tutorial relationships are of less 
account: the professor and staff are not so 
much teachers as senior colleagues, guiding 
the independent research of younger men. 
Credit is gained not I so much by producing 
all-round efficiency in the individual, but by 
exhibiting the results of investigation, and 
the funds are expended with this end in view; 
lavish resources are required for equipment, 
and the staff are prized not for their tutorial 
powers as directors of youth, but for evidence 
of original powers in research. 

Our universities in all countries are at 
present pulled in these two directions, and 
attempt as best they may to combine both 
functions. Where the resources are ample, 
as at Oxford and Cambridge or in the larger 
universities of the Continent and of America, 
the double duty can be discharged, but it is 
of capital importance for administrators to 
allow for the fundamental distinction and to 
devise plans so that whatever aim is accepted 
shall be achieved, even though this involves 
dispensing with some fields of study and 
research which the title of "University" 
might properly include. 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 159 

Thus the discussion of the functions of a 
university is seen to bear close relations to 
the entire problem of vocational training. As 
a place of research, the university department 
is in close touch with professional and indus- 
trial life, for in all departments, except those 
concerned with pure learning, it finds its 
problem for investigation in the difficulties 
which the practitioner encounters. Econom- 
ics, politics, chemistry , medicine, each depends 
for its stimulus upon questions raised in the 
world outside. As an institute for education, 
the university may either aim at a general 
culture such as our older universities profess, 
or it may organize definite vocational schools, 
such as schools of medicine, or of law: in the 
latter case it has to see to it, as it best may, 
that a maximum of liberal culture is secured 
by the spirit in which the professional studies 
are pursued: here, as in the case of the 
technical school above noted, the risk of 
failure is greatest. And, again, such a college 
should hold no quarter with a curriculum 
which sacrifices the aims of liberal culture 
to the pretence of preparing for a craft or 
profession while holding the student aloof 
from real contact with practice. 

I have dwelt upon this theme not only 
because it is in place in any discussion of types 
of school, but because evidence is to hand 



160 THE SCHOOL 

from many quarters, in the British Empire 
as elsewhere, that university corporations 
are being recognized as indispensable factors 
in national progress: students flock to them; 
millionaires, cities, states support them : it is 
seen that much will result, of evil or good, from 
the skill with which their policy is directed. 
We have to go back to the Europe of medi- 
eval times to find a parallel to this situation. 
Nor can we see the working of these forces 
in their proper light if we confine our attention 
solely to the body of students and instructors 
gathered on the university "campus." The 
idea of university "extension" has long been 
familiar, and this is now taking new shape 
in England under the impulse of the Workers' 
Educational Association, while in America a 
variety of influences, which can perhaps be 
best studied in the State of Wisconsin, are 
giving to the term university a new signifi- 
cance. Even the auspices under which these 
chapters are written as part of a "Home 
University Library" illustrate the working 
of the same tendency. In the Middle Ages the 
difficulties of travel and of communication, 
combined with the scarcity of books, confined 
the organized machinery of culture for adults 
to selected spots where an institution could 
be created with all the symbols and the 
authority appropriate to the worship of 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 161 

Minerva. But the modern world, with its 
democratic temper which holds in small 
esteem the traditions of a learned caste, and 
its facilities for rapid communication and 
diffusion, realizes that the society of a univer- 
sity may embrace many groups within the 
State who possess capacity and energy for the 
serious pursuit of knowledge even though they 
are not concerned to complete the courses 
prescribed for degrees. It thus becomes an 
organ for extending the resources of science 
beyond the limits of the school as defined in 
this volume; but it becomes "an instrument 
of the people," placing its resources at the 
disposal of all members of the State who need 
its aid. No doubt this ideal is easier to de- 
scribe than to fulfil: the duty is not fulfilled 
by merely distributing lecturers or books to 
miscellaneous audiences; still less by offering 
instruction of an elementary grade, such as 
the schools should provide; nor is the ideal 
attained by ministering only to one class of 
the community, artisan or other, which can 
make its voice heard. The university of the 
future will place at the disposal of all classes, 
for the common benefit, both the methods of 
study and the result of research which give to 
it its special character; and it will discover 
manifold means by which such a purpose 
can be achieved. The more it opens out 



162 THE SCHOOL 

in this new field, the more readily will the 
claims of universities for material aid be 
acknowledged. 

6. At this point we can see more clearly 
the value of institutions which may be distin- 
guished from all that we have hitherto dis- 
cussed by offering partial education, 1 i. e. they 
engage only a part of the scholar's daily 
activity, the other part being already allotted 
to a vocation. Of this the clerk working in 
his spare time at commercial geography, the 
engineer attending evening classes in mathe- 
matics are examples. There is an infinite 
variety of such institutions, from the instruc- 
tion given through the post in correspondence 
classes, to the courses sanctioned by some 
universities for instruction towards profes- 
sional degrees. Their merit lies in the close 
relationship which should always be empha- 
sized between the course of study and the 
vocation; for the motive which leads the 
student to attend such a course is always most 
powerful when he finds that an immediate 
goal can be proposed for his endeavours. 

It is true that some so-called continuation 
classes are still maintained in this country 

1 Lack of space forbids introducing here the important 
service to liberal education rendered by the Sunday-school, 
by Y. M. C. Associations, etc., conducted by non-profes- 
sional teachers. 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 163 

which offer instruction of a miscellaneous 
type, reaching down to handwriting and 
including, as Sir John Gorst on a famous oc- 
casion admitted, the art of dancing. But the 
only justification for including such studies 
in a scheme of partial education has been 
found by deploring the deficiency of regular 
school education imparted in earlier years. 
This is a bad plea to advance, and could only 
serve the administrator as a temporary expe- 
dient: his duty clearly lay in improving the 
work of the elementary school, so that there 
would be no necessity to offer a repetition of 
its curriculum to young men and women. 
It is not surprising that efforts to restore the 
elements of culture to the forlorn derelicts 
who made nothing of the "standards" in 
their childhood have largely proved abortive. 
For youths, engaged in the lowest branches 
of toil, revert most unwillingly to the school 
desk: they are now adolescents, and we find 
them spending their leisure in the social 
opportunities of the city streets. It is pro- 
posed to win them back to some regard for 
culture by applying compulsion, and while 
the State can hope to achieve something by 
its authority (where it can persuade the 
employer to diminish the long hours of 
labour), such a system of partial education 
will only succeed if it recognizes the status 



164 THE SCHOOL 

of the adolescent, by giving some scope for his 
social impulses and for his precocious sense of 
independence. In this field valuable experi- 
ence has already been gained: the lads' clubs 
and girls' clubs of Manchester, and similar 
institutions in London, point out the road 
to success — these institutions are not mere 
class-rooms, nor mere recreation-rooms, but 
they are corporate societies, and as such, in 
good hands, they achieve for their members 
many of the aims of liberal training which in 
another rank of society are entrusted to the 
secondary school and the college. For it is 
plain that among a group of young people who 
are economically independent, but receive 
no stimulus to culture either from their home 
or their employment, the motive for self- 
improvement can only be reached through 
social organization adapted to their stage of 
growth. Once more the official provision for 
instruction tends to fail where it offers intel- 
lectual work in isolation; if contact cannot be 
directly made with vocation, then it must 
be sought by giving a place to social instincts. 
7. Our discussion of vocational needs has 
thus brought under our review most varied 
types of institution, from the university to 
the lads' club. One further question may 
be asked which may place these efforts in some 
relation other than the necessities induced by 



TYPES OF SCHOOL 165 

class distinctions or economic needs. Con- 
sidering solely the quality and character of 
the scholar, can we determine in any individ- 
ual case at what point attendance at a school 
for the entire day should cease and make way 
for absorption in a vocation along with its 
appropriate vocational training? The answer 
to this inquiry is not difficult if we admit to 
the full those individual differences in taste 
and capacity on which we have already dwelt. 
For every scholar displays, sooner or later, 
what may be called "vocational instinct," 
stimulated or retarded more or less by the 
environment of home or school; and the signs 
can be clearly discerned by those who know 
him. Young people under normal conditions 
want to play some part in the world; in 
spite of the comradeship of school, its artificial 
programme palls on many as the years go by : 
the indefinite extension of schooling (i. e. of 
general liberal schooling) is by no means a 
benefit to all. It is best to release some even 
as early as twelve years and to give them the 
benefit of a Trades School type of experience; 
others may well remain till fourteen, when 
they are ready for an apprenticeship combined 
with instruction; others show powers which 
make a secondary school life congenial to 
them; and there still remain some to whom, 
as we saw in Chapter II, a longer withdrawal 



166 THE SCHOOL 

from vocation can safely be permitted. In all 
countries where a fair supply of public in- 
struction is to hand these individual differ- 
ences operate effectively in the middle ranks 
of society, but at the two extremes there is 
maladjustment. At the one end, lack of means 
sometimes turns away from school a gifted 
child whose powers would benefit by a higher 
education; at the other, extreme wealth often 
purchases for youths of both sexes an extended 
time of leisure at school when the vocational 
instinct should cut it short. In other words, a 
great many boys and girls would make more 
of life if they went "to work" for at least 
part of the day, even when their parents can 
afford to pay handsomely for their schooling. 

Note. — The reader may be surprised at finding no reference 
in this chapter to differentiation of schools, on the basis of 
sex, especially as in England separate colleges and "High 
Schools" for girls have played so prominent a part. But the 
omission is deliberate. A scientific treatment of the relation 
of the sexes in education would require us to consider the 
psychology of sex differentiation in Chap. V, and to pursue 
the theme to the closing chapter on Corporate Life. Or, 
rather, one should go back to the foundations, and survey the 
status of girls and women by the aid of anthropology, history, 
and ethics before attempting a dispassionate review of the 
contemporary situation. For such a study these pages can- 
not afford space; while to treat so grave a problem superficially 
would not accord with the serious purpose of this Library. 

Throughout the volume the author tacitly assumes that 
men and women should be co-partners in (modern) educa- 
tional effort, as mothers and fathers are partners in the 
(modern) home. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TEACHER 

1. There is a wide gulf between the lofty 
ideals assumed for the profession of school 
teacher and the popular estimate of his 
value. Our English fiction from Thackeray 
and Dickens onwards usually portrays the 
school-master in an unamiable light. And 
the people at large are of the same mind. 
"A teacher, are you?" said a colliery manager 
of my acquaintance recently to me; "ah 
well! I was a pupil-teacher myself for a year 
or two, but I soon found a better job." He 
expressed the popular mind : it is not so much 
because teaching is ill paid, but that it is 
regarded as not quite a worthy employment 
for a man of capacity. There is supposed 
to be something effeminate or enfeebling 
about it; and indeed it is more and more 
coming to be regarded as an occupation for 
women rather than men. Not that children 
are the worse for being taken in hand by 
women; the contrary is the case. But it is 
a capital misfortune when, as has already 

167 



168 THE SCHOOL 

happened in America, men cease to teach the 
young, instead of becoming partners with 
women. 

Formerly, as we have seen, school teaching 
maintained its prestige as a branch of the 
clerical calling; now that respect for learning 
and science has been enhanced, it seeks to 
recover status by identifying itself with the 
pursuits of the academy and laboratory. 
Fifty years ago the ambitions of teachers 
who started at the lowest grade were crowned 
by gaining the right to prefix Rev. to their 
names: now the struggle, equally intense, is 
to secure the letters B. A. as a suffix. Thus 
within the profession itself there is often a 
lack of enthusiasm : rarely does a man advise 
his sons to follow the father's example, as 
is the case in other callings. 

The reasons for this depreciation are not 
far to seek: they are traced to the underlying 
contempt that the adult community has for 
the child community. When the pessimist 
of the Old Testament declared that "child- 
hood and youth are vanity" he was echoing 
the general opinion handed down through the 
ages; and the New Testament, declaring that 
"of such is the kingdom of heaven," was 
anticipating a point of view which is only now 
coming to be realized as nearer the truth. It 
is true that parents are full of affection and 



THE TEACHER 169 

sentiment, but the intensely individualistic 
attitude of the parent who loves his children 
as the most valuable part of his property is 
far removed from that respect for children as 
a whole which is needed if the teacher's calling 
is to be treated seriously. The crude con- 
ception of childhood still flourishes which 
regards the child at any stage as little more 
than an imperfect specimen of man or woman, 
to be despised because he cannot yet do the 
things that "we" can do, living an inferior 
life which must be superseded as soon as may 
be. Thus to the teacher, and to the public 
who share this view, the calling often ap- 
pears somewhat abject. "Men of the world " 
are always pitting their wits against their 
equals, but the teacher is shut up with a 
crowd of his inferiors; if he asserts himself 
he takes the likeness of a petty tyrant; if he 
allows his mind to sink to their level he tends 
to lose his manhood. This, in plain terms, is 
what is always being felt both within the 
teaching body and in the world beyond the 
school walls. Even in the universities, which 
stand aloof from school teaching, the same 
disability is seen: Cecil Rhodes, while de- 
vising by his will a scheme for the mutual 
benefit of Oxford and of the Empire, placed 
on record his distrust of the don. 

2. Clearly this fundamental attitude affects 



170 THE SCHOOL 

the efficiency of teaching; for it not only dis- 
courages the best ability from adopting the 
career, and leads many who have adopted it 
as a stop-gap to forsake it on the first occa- 
sion, but it prevents progress, hindering the 
efforts of those who would restore the self- 
esteem of the teacher by widening the area 
of professional responsibility. There are few 
callings in which the workers have been per- 
mitted by public opinion to have less control 
over their professional procedure, although 
a few teachers' societies, especially in the 
primary grades, have strenuously endeavoured 
to secure some independence. We have seen 
that, from the nature of the case, the school 
as an institution must be externally con- 
trolled by public authorities, but such a situ- 
ation should be compatible with an abundant 
measure of internal freedom and self-govern- 
ment by the teaching body, if that were 
desired by public opinion. In a few institu- 
tions, such as the old-established "Public 
Schools" and some of the universities, where 
public opinion can be disregarded, such free- 
dom is asserted; not, however, on behalf of 
teachers as a whole, but solely as the privilege 
of those who tutor the children of the leisured 
class. Elsewhere it is tacitly accepted that 
the State, both in its central and local or- 
gans of authority, must constantly check the 



THE TEACHER 171 

teacher's activity, since the teaching body are 
not of a character to be entrusted as such 
with privilege and power. The movement, in 
fact, proceeds in a vicious circle: served by 
many members who are only birds of pas- 
sage, depreciated by public opinion, cramped 
within the petty regime of the class-room, the 
profession tends to lose in efficiency: it 
thus appears to the State as unworthy to be 
exalted and is kept bound in leading-strings 
which perpetuate these evils. 

The remedy is not far to seek: respect from 
the State and from public opinion only ensues 
upon the creation of self-respect, i. e. by dis- 
covering new standards of value in the calling 
itself. If the arguments of earlier chapters 
have been followed these are being discovered 
more and more on those basic principles 
derived from the nature of childhood. Thus 
the teacher is no longer a clergyman, or a 
clerical assistant; but he remains an idealist, 
for he studies the child in society as growing 
up in due course to occupy the place of his 
fathers and advance the spiritual progress 
of the race. While he cherishes his rank 
among scholars and men of science he has 
discovered his own special field of scholarship 
and research, allied to but independent of 
theirs: his peculiar study is Child Study, 
i. e. the investigation of all that concerns 



172 THE SCHOOL 

the growth from stage to stage in children's 
life and experience; and herewith, of course, 
the measures and methods by which this 
growth can be most prudently directed. He 
is no longer a dispenser at secondhand of 
scholastic wares; he declines to retail the 
crumbs of knowledge that he has submis- 
sively received in the academies; but he 
tends to be a thinker on his own account, 
judging of cause and effect, revising and if 
need be re-shaping that machinery of schools 
in which the community engages his activi- 
ties. Thus a demand arises for a formal 
recognition of the teacher's office, and in 
England this has taken shape for many years 
past in a lively agitation on behalf of a 
Teachers' Council, as a professional body with 
powers bestowed by the legislature, dealing 
especially with the qualifications of the 
teacher and allied matters which affect his 
status. The strength of this agitation and 
the co-operative effort made by all ranks 
of teachers is evidence that a professional 
consciousness now exists which can claim 
recognition. In earlier days little could be 
said on behalf of freedom for the teacher 
when, as in Prussia of the eighteenth century, 
the pensioned drill sergeant was selected to 
teach the children; or, as in America of later 
days, a charming girl of Irish descent could 



THE TEACHER 173 

usually secure a teaching appointment by 
the good office of a city alderman; or, as in 
England, even now, it is possible for persons 
to be employed as "supplementary teachers" 
if they are vaccinated and have reached the 
age of eighteen; * under such conditions the 
State is compelled to assume autocratic 
powers and rely entirely upon its own author- 
ity. But, unfortunately, a bureaucracy when 
once established finds it hard to surrender a 
part of its power in compliance with new 
conditions. 

3. This appears to be the situation at pres- 
ent disclosed in England, and it can no doubt 
be paralleled in other states both of the Old 
and of the New World. In England we have 
witnessed of late years an unexampled display 
of energy at Whitehall, re-shaping the entire 
field of public education, and the ability with 
which this reconstruction has been carried 
out will surely be remembered with gratitude 
by succeeding generations. But it is evidently 
hard for those who have thus re-shaped a sys- 
tem to recognize that the very success of their 
endeavours demands a change of attitude, 
and it seems to be generally held in England 
that the time has come for the central 
authority to surrender some of its powers. 

1 It is right to add that this grade of teacher is disappear- 
ing and will have no successors. 



174 THE SCHOOL 

This criticism applies, however, still more 
to some of the local authorities, which, with 
less warrant in expert knowledge and re- 
sources, tend to assume an authority alien 
to the spirit of democratic freedom. An 
almost chronic ill-will appears to exist in 
some parts of England between those who 
administer the schools (whether officials or 
laymen) and those who teach; it often 
slumbers, but it occasionally breaks out, as 
recently, in unhappy agitation which at- 
tracts the attention of the entire country. 
It is the children who suffer most from such 
disturbances, and it would appear to be the 
first duty of those who lead the country in 
matters of education to induce a finer spirit 
to prevail. I venture to give voice to this 
criticism in a chapter dealing with the Teacher 
because conditions of this kind (whose opera- 
tions are only dimly discerned by the public) 
tend to deprive the schools of the services of 
the best kind of teachers. If taxpayers and 
parents who follow other callings would look 
at the business of schooling from the teacher's 
standpoint, they would readily see that any 
benefit which can accrue to children from 
attendance at school will be enormously en- 
hanced if the teacher is satisfied — honourably 
satisfied — with the conditions of service: not 
only with the emolument, but with those 



THE TEACHER 175 

relationships which maintain his self-respect 
and his professional freedom. 

4. When, however, we come to consider 
positive measures for recognizing the teaching 
force, many difficulties are presented. In 
the Act of 1902 the experiment was tried of 
inviting teachers' representatives to a small 
share in the local administration by giving 
them seats on education committees, but it 
has become increasingly clear that this course 
has tended rather to alienate local sympathy 
than to assist the autonomy of the teaching 
body. Here and there, no doubt, the services 
of distinguished individuals, especially among 
women, have been secured by this system of 
co-optation, but the principle is at bottom 
unsound, for it tends to confuse the relation 
of employer and employee. What the teach- 
ing profession rather desires is that its voice 
should be heard and respected; that its 
opinion should be heard not merely through 
self-appointed societies maintained by the 
zeal of enthusiasm, but should be sought and 
expressed through a recognized procedure 
based upon legislation. An example of this 
kind is already afforded in the Consultative 
Committee created by the Act of 1899, but it 
is a misfortune that this body is merely the 
creation of government nominees and stands 
in no official relation with the general body 



176 THE SCHOOL 

of teachers. But the acknowledged benefit 
secured through its deliberations is evidence 
enough that the principle is right, and that it 
may be applied in county and city areas as 
well as at Whitehall. Example might here be 
taken from some of the cantons of Switzer- 
land, where the teaching profession stands 
high in public regard, and, as a consequence, 
is admitted to a voice, not in the final deci- 
sions of authority, but in the preliminary 
deliberations. Under such a system griev- 
ances have no place: regulations are not 
issued first and then complained of after- 
wards, but the professional council chosen by 
the teaching body has the opportunity, not 
by favour but by right, of considering and de- 
claring its opinion before the decisive change 
is made. If such a policy and attitude could 
now be adopted by those in authority, it 
would probably do more to promote the 
inner efficiency of our schools than many 
enactments of the legislature. 1 

1 A friend has reminded me of another hindrance to the 
teacher's efficiency — the increasing burden of office work, 
beginning, as in many elementary schools, with the collection 
of pence on Monday. Administrators ought to have some 
sympathy here, for they should know the deadening effect of 
office routine, but in England they are at present merciless in 
adding to the burden of Forms and Returns. Our English 
schools will never display the freshness of vigour which should 
surround a society of young people until the teacher's load is 
lightened. A few thousands spent on clerks, with typewriters 



THE TEACHER 177 

There is, of course, another side to this 
picture. In all professions the evolution of 
the trained expert, with his trade secrets, his 
guild privileges, his certified authority, is 
watched by outsiders with jealousy. And as 
regards the teacher this jealousy will always 
be felt, since his work touches other fields of 
activity at so many points. We may illus- 
trate from the agitation already alluded to 
on behalf of a Registration Council. By the 
Act of 1899 and amending Acts, Parliament 
sanctioned this mode of creating a teaching 
profession, but when the Board of Education, 
entrusted with initiating the formation of the 
Council, set about the task, it declared the 
situation to be impossible, because of the ex- 
istence of thousands of persons, musicians, 
artists, craftsmen, and the like, who claimed 
to rank along with the professional teachers 
whose interests, presumably, were contem- 
plated by the legislature. The obvious fact 
is that any one, from a nursemaid to a senator, 
can teach something, for the young are always 
learning from all sorts of people; the admin- 

and ledgers, would in many localities do much to raise the 
level of achievement all round. Business men rely more and 
more on such aids to keep their minds active and alert, but 
they are slow to see how needful these qualities are for the 
success of school life. Since 1902 the load has been increased 
in all types of school, for every reform at headquarters adds 
to the clerical burdens of principals of schools. 



178 THE SCHOOL 

istrator's task is not easy when he seeks to 
devise regulations which shall differentiate 
the school teacher who pursues his calling as 
a distinct profession from the varied list of 
persons (including the scientist and the 
physician as well as the musician and the 
painter) who take a subsidiary interest in 
the instruction of the young. 

The difficulty is heightened as regards 
school teachers by the unwillingness of the 
State to allow freedom to any of its servants : 
registration and professional recognition have 
been secured with comparative ease for many 
callings, not only because the public demand 
expert service, but because the service is paid 
for by individual fees. Any one, for example, 
can give medical advice to his neighbour, 
but if a fee is attached to the advice the 
registration law steps in -and protects the 
trained and recognized practitioner. At an 
earlier day, when the practice of the private 
school-master was more in evidence than it is 
now, attempts were made to organize the 
teaching profession on a fee-paying basis, but 
with the vast increase in the public support 
and control of schools, the uselessness of such 
Teachers' Registration Acts has become r ob- 
vious: it is the State which, on the whole, 
employs teachers and determines their rank, 
and the State, for its own good, must be led to 



THE TEACHER 179 

see the importance of giving to the teacher a 
measure of initiative and self-government such 
as is admitted to be wholesome and effective 
for other callings. If the argument employed 
in an earlier chapter on behalf of freedom for 
children be also admitted, then the case for 
the teacher is strengthened, for he who is free 
to develop himself will be the more ready to 
allow the same freedom to the children whom 
he directs. At present the great bulk of 
teachers, in England and other countries, are 
classified, trained, and certificated by State 
enactment: whatever influence they exercise 
is commonly secured through agitation, or 
through the courtesy of State officials when 
these see the wisdom of consulting teachers 
before legislating for them. In the nature of 
things, there seems no reason why this work 
should not be done with at least equal effi- 
ciency if the State handed over the details to 
organs largely chosen by the teaching body — 
thus making this profession, like others, the 
guardian of its own standards and the effec- 
tive promoter of its own improvement. 

The objection usually taken to such pro- 
posals arises from the method by which the 
State affords financial aid to the training of 
teachers: by awarding grants per capita to 
students in elementary training colleges it 
places the teacher in an eleemosynary (?) re- 



180 THE SCHOOL 

lation to the State different from that which 
prevails in other professions. The State says, 
in effect, "he that pays the piper calls the 
tune: since we, officials of the State, support 
the intending teacher, we must regulate mi- 
nutely his affairs and keep him in tutelage." 
But if it can be shown that the time for 
tutelage is past, it would be an easy matter 
so to rearrange the grants-in-aid as to safe- 
guard the public interest, while relieving the 
State officials of a task which cannot but be 
uncongenial to men of broad training. 

5. Underlying the whole situation, how- 
ever, there exist further complications. We 
have described the teaching body as if it were 
one, and it is true enough that the spirit of co- 
operation between antagonistic groups has 
been a feature of the last decade; but it is 
still true that the distinctions between types 
of school which we noted in the last chapter, 
due to the influence of deep-seated traditions 
and habits, extend to the teachers also, and 
influence at every turn the current of policy. 

We cannot enter into the details of these 
embarrassments, but the broad principle is 
surely clear enough — everything which tends 
to co-operation and unity, which helps one 
group of teachers to exchange their special 
powers and talents with their brethren, is to 
the good; and everything which perpetuates 



THE TEACHER 181 

barriers, which accentuates differences, is to 
the bad, and should be discountenanced by 
the State. Although much should be con- 
ceded as to differences in types of school, we 
can only publicly admit differences in the 
qualification and status of teachers so far as 
the needs of children differ at the stages of 
growth. There are infants, children, youths, 
students — the needs of each of these differ so 
greatly as to require different experience and 
qualities in the teacher, and we can distin- ' 
guish kindergarden, primary, secondary, and 
college teachers quite justly and naturally on 
this basis. Such distinctions are based on the 
nature of the employment, just as those be- 
tween surgeons and physicians in the medical 
profession, and they can be recognized with- 
out any depreciation of one group at the 
expense of another. 

It would take us beyond the scope of this 
volume to inquire into the studies, academic 
or professional, which should engage the 
attention of those who are designed for the 
teacher's calling. All the four groups of 
teachers need to be equipped as broadly as 
possible with knowledge and capacity in every 
branch of study, for children at all ages are 
ready to learn. In this sense it may be said 
of teaching more than of other callings that 
the training is never complete; the equip- 



182 THE SCHOOL 

ment in art and scholarship gained at college 
merely provides a foundation for methods of 
investigation which should occupy the teacher 
all his life. He travels, attends summer 
schools, joins scientific societies, pursues 
hobbies, not only as other men do for the 
cultivation of personal taste, but because his 
worth in his profession depends largely on 
the width of his intellectual and social sym- 
pathies. We have here a justification for the 
long periods of vacation permitted to the 
teacher in comparison with those engaged in 
other employments. These are intended not 
only as relief from the nervous fatigue in- 
duced by active work in the class-room, but 
as means for positive improvement by the 
enlargement of experience. Thus one of the 
chief hindrances to success with children is 
overcome: the school-room tends always to 
be a place for narrow specialist interest in 
contrast to that shallow but universal interest 
in human activities which distinguishes the 
young: the teacher needs to be a jack-of -all- 
trades, as well as master of one; in other 
words, while his native capacities will lead 
him, like all adults, to specialize, i. e. to care 
especially for one select field of study, his 
calling will tend to make him catholic in his 
taste, to care somewhat for music, for art, for 
literature, for science, for handicrafts, for out- 



THE TEACHER 183 

door life, for society, since to be a guide in the 
school community all these pursuits have their 
part to play. 

6. Clearly, too, when we seek to classify 
groups of teachers a difference will appear 
in the emphasis laid upon the pursuits engag- 
ing the special interest of one or of another. 
We have noticed a sharp difference between 
the stages of youth and the pre-adolescent 
stages as regards the general field of interest: 
young children are predominantly concerned 
in practical output with material — they are 
craftsmen; whereas the youth has advanced 
to a larger vision in his social and moral in- 
terests. Hence, if distinctions are to be made 
between primary and secondary teachers we 
should say that the ideal primary teacher is 
one who, above all, is an artist and craftsman, 1 
while the ideal secondary teacher is more in 
accord with the scholarly type which has 
been the tradition for all grades in the pro- 
fession. At present the chief tendency among 
those who seek to improve the status of 
primary teachers is to induce them to pursue 
scholastic studies of the standard university 
type, and the most coveted posts are reserved 
for those who achieve academic distinction. 
But if our interpretation of child development 
be correct, a new conception of this status 

1 Compare pp. 90 and 203. 



184 THE SCHOOL 

is urgently demanded. Many teachers, it 
is true, pay some attention to fine art and 
handicraft, and there is due recognition at the 
present day of "manual training' ' as an ele- 
ment of value in a teacher's equipment, but 
these pursuits are not brought into relation 
with the ideal elements which attach to the 
pursuit of literature. They are regarded as 
part and parcel of the vulgar life of the work- 
shop and the labour yard, and their advance- 
ment in professional esteem will depend 
upon a more honest recognition, in the spirit 
of Carlyle and Ruskin, o.f the nobility of 
"work." x Much would be gained if William 
Morris rather than Roger Ascham could be 
set before the primary teacher as an example. 
His task would be not to produce a new 
generation of mere factory hands or of cheer- 
less diggers of the soil, but of youths ready 
to find in these crafts a better interpretation 
of literature and of life than the school has 
hitherto been able to provide. 

7. But such a reform will only be welcomed 
by those who have accepted modern views as 
to stages of growth, and since these views 
depend upon the scientific study of children, 
it is clear that the broad culture in scholarship 
or the crafts which we expect from teachers, 
will only bear its finest fruit when it is sup- 

1 Compare pp. 90 and 206. 



THE TEACHER 185 

ported by a distinctive interest in the final 
"subject" of his calling, viz. the growing 
child. Thus it is coming to be more clearly 
realized with every decade that this field of 
science, called by many names and pursued 
by many methods, will presently constitute 
the acknowledged and necessary basis for the 
teacher's equipment, serving the same pur- 
poses as natural science performs for the 
physician, or mathematics for the engineer. 
At an earlier day it was vaguely supposed 
that, since the teacher dealt with the human 
mind, a knowledge of psychology should help 
him along, but so long as the psychology 
itself dealt only with the adult mind, little 
headway could be expected. But from the 
days of Herbart progress has been slowly 
made towards that genetic treatment of 
mental life which alone can afford real 
guidance to the teacher. First of all a series 
of records, such as those of Preyer, were 
made of the first years of infancy; thereupon 
a whole host of investigators, among whom 
Stanley Hall, Earl Barnes, and Kerchen- 
steiner are pre-eminent, have investigated 
the content of children's minds during school 
years, collecting data from every field of 
human interest. Finally, the methods of 
the laboratory, applied first of all by Fechner 
and Wundt to general psychology, are being 



186 THE SCHOOL 

applied to child development, and a science 
that the Germans are calling Experimentelle 
P'adagogik is being organized by Meumann 
and others, which claims to be able in due 
course to revise the entire system of school 
instruction. This claim is perhaps extrava- 
gant, and some indulgence may be extended 
to the enthusiasm of men of science when they 
first discover a new tool; but in branches 
of teaching where results can be subjected to 
rigorous time-tests, and where apparatus can 
be devised which isolates some special feature 
of mental activity, one can fairly expect that 
the laboratory will throw light upon the 
learning process. 

One might extend this account by reference 
to the share in these investigations now taken 
by the medical profession. A child physiology 
has been put together side by side with a 
child psychology, and these taken together 
and applied to the conditions under which 
teachers and scholars meet in the school pro- 
vide a body of technical professional inquiry 
which, if time is allotted for its mastery, 
equips the teacher with a reasoned foundation 
for his professional activities. Unfortunately, 
we are far as yet from allowing the time 
needed for such study. Its adequate mastery 
is at least as difficult as the task imposed upon 
the medical student, and yet no one at the 



THE TEACHER 187 

present day is bold enough to propose such 
an expenditure on the training of the teacher 
as is demanded for the physician. Much, 
however, will be gained if at the present day 
the foundations of pedagogic science are 
firmly laid in the scientific treatment of 
genetic psychology: a later generation will 
reap the benefit in a race of teachers more 
conscious than their predecessors have been 
of the strength that is imparted to a profes- 
sion when its work is governed by the methods 
of scientific research. 

8. Nor can the professional equipment of a 
teacher be regarded as limited by that range 
of studies usually covered by the term ex- 
perimental science. It is indeed one purpose 
of this volume to show how closely the func- 
tion of the school is related to the evolution 
of society which is witnessed outside the school 
walls. When the teacher comes to view the 
details of his day's work in relation to the 
whole school community, and this in turn as 
part of a larger movement in the neighbour- 
hood, the city, the state, a deeper meaning 
and purpose is infused into his time-table, and 
his interests are bound to be quickened. 
Hence some attention is fairly demanded to 
politics, or, if the terms be preferred, to ethics 
and sociology, and to the growth of mankind 
as a matter of historical development. 



188 THE SCHOOL 

But here, as in the study of genetic psy- 
chology, it is only possible for a foundation 
to be laid during the years allotted to pro- 
fessional training; in this as in so many 
other callings the practitioner only really 
appreciates the meaning of his studies when 
he has come face to face with the realities of 
practice. It used to be supposed that the 
technical "theory" of a trade or profession 
could be acquired at one period of life while 
the practice could be pursued at a subse- 
quent period, the latter in some sense being 
superimposed on the other. 1 But it is now 
coming to be recognized, especially, perhaps, 
among engineers, that the candidate or 
apprentice often fails to lay hold of the values 
of "theory" until he has tried his 'prentice 
hand at the practical job. Motive seems to be 
wanting, a perception of values is wanting. 
It would seem better, therefore, that all who 
propose to teach should, as soon as they arrive 
at years of discretion, secure experience, 
undertaking any employment in schools for 
which they are fitted; they are thereafter 
able to see the abstract problem of the 
lecture-room in right proportion, and when 
student days are over the teacher is likely 
to carry with him for his lifetime that habit 
of associating theory with practice, of seeing 

1 Compare p. 152. 



THE TEACHER 189 

the whole in the details, which is the founda- 
tion for rational progress not only in teach- 
ing, but in every trade and profession. 

9. The present writer, therefore, while de- 
siring on behalf of candidates for the teach- 
ing profession a sufficient period of training, is 
not anxious to press for an extension of this 
period as a compulsory rule for all teachers. 
But it is urgent that those who are especially 
alive to their opportunities and are prepared 
to sacrifice much to the improvement of 
education should be specifically and gener- 
ously encouraged. It is just here that the 
greatest failure has so far been witnessed 
in England. Neither the Government nor 
private benefactors who advance research 
seem to have recognized that abundant re- 
sources are needed as a topstone to the edi- 
fice if real advance is to be made among the 
rank and file. Training colleges are provided, 
receiving many thousands of students, but 
no provision is made so that those who 
teach in these training colleges can receive 
advanced instruction and pursue their own 
investigations in pedagogic science so as 
to be able with confidence to lead forward a 
new generation of teachers. If at this moment 
the United States appears to be making rapid 
improvement in the organization of its schools 
and in the daily work of its teachers, this 



190 THE SCHOOL 

result is due partly at least to the forethought 
with which Dr. Murray Butler and others 
twenty years ago laid the foundations for 
institutions, such as the Teachers' College in 
New York, where post-graduate study in all 
branches of education are afforded to men 
and women of ripe experience, who thereafter 
raise to a higher level the equipment of teach- 
ers in every quarter of that vast country. 

So far as the State regards itself as the 
foster-parent of the higher science and culture, 
the duty of promoting research at the higher 
levels applies to all branches of study alike, 
and it seems almost incredible that a wealthy 
government like that of Great Britain should 
find it impossible to spend more than £200,000 
on its higher institutions of learning. But 
the duty is more direct, and the neglect of it 
more patent^ as regards the advanced study 
of education, since the State controls so abso- 
lutely the training college machinery. The 
Government has, indeed, recognized in its 
official documents the importance of research 
in education and has exhorted educators to 
pursue such research, but has hitherto ab- 
stained from practical encouragement. At 
one time there seemed to be the promise of 
useful work of this kind in the Department 
of Inquiries and Reports established at White- 
hall in the time of Mr. Arthur Acland. It 



THE TEACHER 191 

is quite true, as Mr. Acland indicated at 
the time, that this bureau was designed in 
the first instance for the exclusive use of the 
minister and his departmental officials, but 
since governments themselves only exist for 
the benefit of the people, it would readily be 
admitted that the results of investigations 
conducted under such auspices ought to be 
available for any who desire to share them. 
All our great departments of State can, in 
fact, if their managers are so disposed, offer 
invaluable service as instruments of instruc- 
tion, simply by putting freely at the disposal 
of the people the results of investigations 
conducted in the first instance for the bene- 
fit of government servants. The statistical 
material, the historical material which re- 
views development in the home country and 
the course of events abroad, need the co- 
operation of the State for their investigation; 
and, to come to details, there is no reason why 
the Education Library now housed at White- 
hall, with the experts who conduct the 
Office of Inquiries and Reports, should not 
be organized as an institution for the study 
of educational administration, and put their 
resources at the disposal, let us say, of the 
neighbouring University of London. 

Those who administer popular government 
have still something to learn as to the benefits 



192 THE SCHOOL 

which the State can confer on the people by 
employing the intellectual resources accumu- 
lated at headquarters for the benefit of the 
nation at large. The attitude of the State 
official who regarded himself as only remotely 
related to the daily needs of the people, pursu- 
ing a cult which they could not share, has 
been directly opposed to democratic require- 
ments. For, in the last resort, it is only by 
the education of the people that a State sys- 
tem can survive: every official who serves in 
a government office should be regarded by 
enlightened rulers as an instructor, ready at 
all times to distribute information, so that 
an intelligent support may be accorded to 
State policy in place of a docile acceptance 
of party leadership. If this be true of all 
departments of State it is pre-eminently an 
obligation for Education Boards, whether at 
headquarters or in counties and cities. In 
an earlier chapter we have deprecated the 
direct and complete management of schools 
and institutions by such authorities; but 
every such authority is itself in a deeper 
sense an educational institution; if State 
officials are conscious of their "mission" they 
can, simply by the wise use of the printing- 
press, do much to advance the bounds of 
knowledge not only among teachers, but 
among the people at large. When education- 



THE TEACHER 193 

ists in England complain that the public is 
indifferent to education, the answer should 
be made that little is done, apart from sec- 
tarian and political disputes, to arouse their 
interest: as soon as secretaries and directors 
realize their dependence upon the people, 
they will readily find means to secure popular 
appreciation and sympathy, and thus educate 
their constituency to a renewal of faith in 
those resources of culture which they are 
charged to dispense. 

10. Summary. — It may be worth while to 
put into a few sentences the suggestions above 
made for the improvement of schooling, which 
should make the teaching profession more 
fitted to its task, and thus take the most 
direct means to improve the quality of the 
School. 

(a) Legislative provision for Teachers' 
Councils acting as advisers both to the 
central and to local authorities would do 
much to give the rank and file a status which 
they lack, as well as to secure the benefit to 
public education of the reasoned conclusions 
of its teaching body. 

(b) While accepting the obligations of 
"civil" or public service, the teacher can 
fairly claim a substantial voice, denied to him 
at present, in determining the conditions and 
qualifications for service in his profession. 



194 THE SCHOOL 

(c) Distinctions of rank or grade among 
public teachers can only properly be based 
upon the differing nature of children at suc- 
cessive periods of growth. Here a sharp con- 
trast appears between the primary teacher 
whose ideal equipment should be that of the 
craftsman and artist, and the secondary 
teacher who as regards his field of scholar- 
ship rightly devotes himself to humanistic 
studies. At the. same time every teacher 
should, so far as his leisure allows, expand 
his tastes to all branches of human activity 
in those elementary stages attainable by his 
scholars. 

(d) The study of education, both of genetic 
psychology and of the social and administra- 
tive aspects of education has now made suffi- 
cient progress as to be of definite service 
to the teaching body. Hence the time has 
arrived not only to organize more fully the 
professional training of teachers, but to pro- 
vide adequately for advanced study and for 
research. Public authorities could greatly 
promote such studies by placing fully at the 
public disposal the results of their own inves- 
tigation; aiming of set purpose to win the 
support of the people by displaying fully the 
policy which guides their ministrations. Thus 
the offices of State can themselves serve a 
valuable purpose as educational institutions. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 

1. The initial difficulty in dealing with 
the school curriculum is that every one who 
takes an interest in the matter has already 
made up his mind as to the "subject" which 
he regards as most important. The adult 
has already made his choice; his conception 
of values, of what is worth while in life, is al- 
ready determined : and he thereupon assumes 
that these valuable things must be supplied 
as nutriment for the young. Unless he has 
pursued the study of education with con- 
siderable detachment of mind he is unwilling 
to conceive of the curriculum as cyclical 
development, as a process in which various 
modes of experience may find an appropriate 
place at some important stage, although 
proving of little service if supplied at another 
period. 

This is, however, the only method by which 
the choice of studies can be discussed with 
any prospect of success. We have our group 
of immature beings, actively engaged, even 

195 



196 THE SCHOOL 

when their teacher leaves them alone, in 
mastering their environment; all he has to 
do is to examine these activities, and interpret 
their meaning in relation to the future life, 
the larger adult experience to which they 
lead. 

" The fundamental factors in the educative 
process are an immature, undeveloped being, 
and certain social aims, meanings, values, 
incarnate in the matured experience of the 
adult. The educative process is the due 
interaction of these forces. Such a concep- 
tion of each in relation to the other as facili- 
tates completest and freest interaction is the 
essence of educational theory" (Prof. Dewey). 

Hence our task is to follow the develop- 
ment already outlined in Chapter V, sketch- 
ing for each stage the nature of the employ- 
ment that seems most adapted to the needs 
of the organism. We need have no anxiety 
that a curriculum so framed will neglect to 
prepare the scholar for adult life, whether 
that life be regarded as leisure or as vocation; 
for the child himself is by no means an in- 
different spectator of the moving scene: his 
own nature impels him to grasp at adult 
activities as year by year his vision of reality 
clears and expands. 

2. In England children are permitted, al- 
though not now encouraged, to go to school 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 197 

at three years of age; in Germany the sixth 
birthday is the appointed date at which to 
begin school life, for on that date the State 
assumes that the time for the childish play 
has passed, and the time for book-learning 
may begin. Now although his native land has 
never given due recognition to Froebel, foreign 
lands have accepted his view as regards the 
little child : we agree in England and America 
that if "school" be treated as a garden, where 
children grow through play, then it is right 
to afford them the opportunity for it. While 
solitude and quiet are good, society is also 
good for little children; and even at this 
stage, as soon as children can walk and 
talk, mothers should admit that their off- 
spring need to cut loose a little from the 
apron-strings. Of course in many families 
this necessary social experience can be found 
apart from the public organization of a school. 
A group of friendly families in a neighbour- 
hood readily supplies opportunities to the 
little ones for corporate play, such as is seen 
better, perhaps, on a summer's day at the sea- 
side than elsewhere in England. But the con- 
ditions of city life, in most sections of society, 
tend to isolate little children too much, unless 
special provision is made, hence the State is 
justified in offering room in Creche or Kinder- 
garten for any children whose homes cannot 



198 THE SCHOOL 

provide either appropriate oversight or ap- 
propriate society for children under six years 
of age. 

While, however, in congested areas where 
the mother has to go out to work, the Kinder- 
garten or Infant School is indispensable as 
a refuge, it is wholly contrary, both to the 
teaching of Froebel and to common sense, 
to set up such institutions for all classes of 
society as rivals to the function discharged 
by a good home. The average child up to 
six years of age learns best by simply living 
and playing around with parents, brothers, 
and sisters, taking in at first hand those 
fundamental conceptions of the daily round 
of life which underlie all later experience. It 
is for this reason that a child is unfortunate 
who is either so well born as to be relegated 
mainly to the expensive care of nurses, or so 
ill born as to be deprived of a homely domestic 
circle. For attendance at an infant school or 
Kindergarten is only in place if it is treated 
as supplementary to the unorganized but 
essential experiences gained in and out of the 
house. 

For neither at home nor at school should 
there be as yet any question of a formal 
curriculum: the main concerns alike of 
teacher as of parent should be with exercise, 
sleep, fresh air, diet, and personal habit : there 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 199 

can be little formal procedure in instruction 
because there is as yet little power of con- 
tinuous attention, nor is the world yet ap- 
prehended as reality. It may be said with 
confidence that, if we omit precocious infants 
from the reckoning, no benefit accrues from 
introducing either language 1 or arithmetic 
to the child's notice before the age of six. If 
any individual children show desire to play 
with boxes of letters, or to notice the succes- 
sion of objects by counting, they should cer- 
tainly not be debarred from such enjoyment; 
but when an infant teacher takes charge of 
a class of such children, the programme by 
which she occupies their time should be 
adapted to the average; and in spite of codes 
and regulations, the psychologists have now 
sufficient evidence to warrant us in dis- 
carding formal instruction before six years 
of age. In Kindergartens where this rule 
is stoutly maintained no difficulty is found 
in keeping the little ones busy — all they 
require is simple material, the simpler the 
better, which they can employ to give sub- 

1 If, however, plans can be devised which familiarize the 
child with writing or with number wholly on the plane of play- 
activity 'this dictum should be modified. Reports from 
schools in Rome and Milan suggest that a further research 
into the psychology of children's perceptive power may pro- 
duce fruitful results — vide Fortnightly Review, and Hampton's 
Magazine (U. S. A.), August, 1911. 



200 THE SCHOOL 

stance to their wealth of fancy. They co- 
operate with their teacher in dance and 
song: then they disperse into smaller groups, 
occupying themselves freely with chalk and 
blackboard, with bricks, with any kind of 
tangible stuff; and all the teacher need do 
is to help the society to live its own life 
without distress or undue disorder. Unfor- 
tunately, the disciples of Froebel often out-do 
their master in elaborating machinery, with 
symbolic gifts and occupations, tending oft- 
times to arrest the progress of more vigorous 
minds while perplexing the simpler souls. 
It is important also that this type of school- 
life should not be too prolonged: some of 
Froebel's followers are prone to assert that 
the methods of the Kindergarten should be 
carried over to the later years, but in so 
saying they contradict their master, who 
clearly discerned the great changes which 
take place with the passing of infancy. 

3. The years seven and eight are usually 
a time of transition; the child has come to 
see meaning in the life about him, but a 
year or two passes before he can emerge 
upon the plane of sensible activity. So in 
these two years a mixed curriculum seems to 
be demanded — play, in the form of dramatic 
activities, is found to be congenial; but a 
beginning can be made with serious attention 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 201 

to language and number, if (and there is 
niuch virtue in this if) the teacher can so 
direct these pursuits as to keep them in touch 
with felt needs. Here at the outset of our 
plans for a time-table we must give due place 
to this cardinal principle, which is slowly 
being admitted as a governing factor both 
in the choice of school pursuits and in the 
method of conducting them. Children differ 
in many features from adults, but they are 
at one with them in the desire to find motive 
and purpose in their occupations : the motive 
may be trivial or transient, but to be most 
effective it must be felt at the time to be im- 
portant. Further, if we desire our children 
to grow rational, i. e. to see the relations 
of cause and effect in daily life, then we 
shall always be seeking to base our scholars' 
activities on the most direct motives which 
lie within their grasp. Thus in the present 
instance: why should a class of seven-year- 
olds learn to read books? They may be 
urged to do so because it will please their 
parents, or because the school says that they 
ought to learn their letters quickly; such 
motives no doubt have weight, but they will 
learn with better success if they have come 
to realize that this acquirement will really 
be of service to themselves, as an avenue to 
new experience: the "psychological moment" 



202 THE SCHOOL 

for beginning this task occurs when the 
teacher finds that the little people have be- 
come curious as to the use of books and 
anxious to share in the acquirement. We 
decide on the age of seven as the right period 
for the average child, because this motive is 
then discerned to be in operation, and a 
method of instruction can therefore be de- 
vised which will bring symbol and reality 
into close connection. The material chosen 
for reading and writing will be such as is 
organically related to other pursuits which 
engage the children, either those selected for 
story and song at school, or those suggested 
from domestic activities. This principle is 
often spoken of by the name correlation, but 
much more is implied than is covered by that 
term: to correlate one school pursuit with 
another often means nothing more than to 
find some cross reference between the one 
and the other. But mental satisfaction de- 
mands more than this: if the young mind is 
to go forward to new pursuits with full 
energy, then the symbol, the abstract science, 
the alien information must be introduced 
as an interpretation of practical interests and 
conscious deficiencies. As is stated in another 
volume of this Library, "while the services 
of each science to practical life are constantly 
insisted on, and in no danger of being over- 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 203 

looked, we far more often and readily forget 
the rise of each science from practical life." 1 
This dictum is as true in the evolution of 
the individual as of the race, and it is of 
capital importance to every teacher and 
parent when proposing to engage children 
upon formal exercises either in book knowl- 
edge or in useful arts. At every turn we 
have to seek for the starting-point, for some 
driving force of interest which will call forth 
the best attention and energy of the learner. 
And, as was said above, this postulate is 
asserted not only on behalf of seven-year- 
olds, but for scholars at all ages, as much 
as for ourselves in the pursuit of our adult 
activities. 

4. Where, then, can we seek for these 
motives? They are displayed abundantly 
in the healthy, normal interests which the 
boy and girl already manifest. Throughout 
the years from seven and eight until the 
approach of adolescence at thirteen, we can 
observe a succession of fields of activity from 
the house indoors to the garden and wood- 
lands out of doors. Thereupon, as the child 
gets acquainted with the possibilities and limi- 
tations of material, ensues an interest in instru- 
ments and tools, which we may summarize 
as the craftsman's interest in the workshop or 

1 Evolution, in M Home University Library," p. 222. 



204 THE SCHOOL 

craft-room: finally, in imitation of his elders, 
he finds, or may find if we give right encour- 
agement, that lively interest in letters and 
books which gives a proper place to the class- 
room and the library. Under these terms, 
house, garden, craft-room, library, we specify 
large regions of interest which have succeeded 
each other in the anthropological story, from 
the time when men first found a home in 
caves to the dawn of culture when the Word 
became the symbol of progress and the Book 
an object of reverence. It would be pedantic 
to attempt to follow in detail the parallel 
between race development and individual 
development, for though the child repeats 
the past history of mankind, he is environed 
also by the present. In this "present" envi- 
ronment, however, he can apprehend only 
what is simple and direct, and as we saw, 
when reviewing the period of stability in 
Chapter V, he masters this environment by 
practical rather than reflective activity. Thus 
the house (school house and home dwelling), 
with its walls, its decoration, its furniture and 
equipment; garden and forest, with animals 
and plants, with seedtime and harvest; work- 
shop, with tools which man first devised to 
subdue the savage world of Nature: finally, 
'the library, embodying that higher stage of 
culture which first led man to send children 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 205 

to school: in each of these directions we 
should endeavour to absorb our scholar's 
powers, not with fanciful exercises, but with 
practical necessary duties which the school 
and home between them require to be done. 
For we have insisted that these children are, 
above all, practical and pragmatical, ready 
to "work" quite as much as to "play." 

At the same time we do not overlook the 
worth of those play tendencies which absorbed 
the entire life in infancy, and which still abide, 
not only as means of pleasure and recreation, 
but as avenues to the enlargement of experi- 
ence. For the infant has now progressed 
until he realizes himself and his kind as part 
of a community expanding far beyond the 
confines of home and school. The circle first 
reaches to the neighbourhood about the child 
and takes form as Heimatskunde (local his- 
tory and geography), so excellently pursued 
in German schools; but quite as readily 
he adventures to distant parts of the globe. 
He realizes the past, hearing with eagerness 
the story of days gone by, and he pictures 
the stretch of space, for to roam beyond the 
limits of the horizon is as attractive to boys 
and girls to-day as it was to their ancestors 
in the days of Ulysses. Thus history and 
geography take their rise, not as learned 
studies, but as part of an expanding circle 



206 THE SCHOOL 

whose images can be stamped upon the 
mind by active impression. Legend and 
literature are thus "expressed" in recitation 
and drama. Events can be recorded in 
letters and in pictures: the record can then 
be bound by child bookbinders, and thus 
the crafts attaching to the library find organic 
association with literature and language. 

5. These illustrations are sufficient to show 
that students of child-nature are looking for 
substantial changes in the plans at present 
pursued for the schooling of young children. 
These plans will demand that the principal 
furniture of the elementary school will be 
benches and tools, some to be used indoors 
and some out of doors: that while the desk 
of our present class-room will be needed for 
a portion of the day, during which the scholars 
are engaged with pen and books, such furni- 
ture will be subordinate to the needs of the 
community for space and material in which 
to pursue the arts and crafts. And, as we 
saw in the last chapter, the distinctive gifts 
of the teacher will be those of the craftsman 
rather than the scholar. As regards the 
daily time-table we can roughly distribute 
it under three heads: (1) in the workshop, the 
needle-room, the garden, there will be serious 
industrial employment day by day. Some of 
the projects undertaken will be directly indus- 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 207 

trial, intended to supply the obvious wants 
either of the school or of the home; others 
will find their motive in the expression of 
artistic needs, as, e. g., in providing drapery 
and accoutrement for a dramatic performance, 
or in binding and decorating a book. (2) Due 
time will be allotted for those leisure employ- 
ments which are comprised in the general 
range of liberal culture: music, the drama, 
with story both in poetry and prose leading 
to history and geography — these are really 
a sequel to the purely ideal constructions 
which were "played" in the Kindergarten, 
and now, under more serious titles, still hold 
a place in the child's experience. (3) A 
substantial part of each day will remain over 
and above for "drill," i. e. for formal technical 
exercises in arithmetic, reading, writing, phys- 
ical exercise, drawing, and any other acquire- 
ment which involves steady repetition and 
drudgery. We saw in Chapter V that children 
at this period are quite ready to take pains, 
to strain their activities in order to acquire 
skill: they have become conscious of differ- 
ences in power between themselves and adults, 
and between one child and another: emula- 
tion and the desire for success spur them to 
achievement: the chief hindrances to a good 
result arise from a lack of steady repetition 
until habits of precision are formed, or the 



208 THE SCHOOL 

onset of fatigue due to excess in strain, or 
lack of motive. For we must once more 
repeat that this third group of pursuits can 
best achieve its end when the motive for drill 
is discerned in the first and second group, 
arising from > the industries or the cultural 
recreations. 

Finally, the school community should be 
allowed some time each day for its members 
to occupy themselves pretty much as they 
please. At present all schools provide short 
intervals between lessons, extending some- 
times to fifteen minutes, in which the scholars 
are left alone; but this is merely a breathing 
space, interposed in order to enable the body 
to be ready once more to help the brain and 
mind in following the teacher's behests. 
Some such plan has already been tried here 
and there, and is at least worth considera- 
tion: it is merely to allow freedom to scholars 
for an hour or so at the end of each school 
day to remain in the school building, and to 
group themselves as they please for the 
further pursuit of anything which they can 
undertake jointly, in the school grounds, with 
the material and equipment which the place 
affords. Dr. Colin Scott, in his Social Educa- 
tion, describes the remarkable effect of such 
freedom on the initiative and social response 
evoked from boys and girls of the ages eleven 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 209 

to thirteen, when they were permitted such 
liberty: and when one contemplates these 
young people in their native conditions, apart 
from our school-room tradition, it seems a 
very natural suggestion that in any school 
where the pupils are really stimulated to 
varied activity, they will be quite competent 
to undertake and execute projects, both 
industrial and cultural, as conceived by them- 
selves. While the children are so employed all 
the teacher has to do is to copy the example of 
the Kindergarten teacher and be near at hand 
to advise, and, if need be, to prevent inexpe- 
rience from causing disaster. Critics may 
indeed inquire why the scholars should use 
the school building for this purpose. If, it 
may be said, they are to do as they please 
without definite instruction, why cannot they 
pursue their avocations at home? But the 
answer is obvious enough : the school building 
with its equipment and its society has already 
absorbed their activity, and provided them 
with motives and projects which they will 
desire to carry out in groups; if the industrial, 
the cultural, and technical pursuits of class 
hours have borne real fruit, the scholars will 
desire to carry on some of these pursuits from 
their own point of view, under their own 
organization: and, as a rule, the school house 
and grounds and the help of the school-teacher 



210 THE SCHOOL 

will be welcomed by groups of scholars when 
so engaged. 

6. The short space of one chapter forbids 
our enlarging on such a scheme of pursuits. 
Many teachers are ripe for it, and many 
schools are partially adopting it. But we may 
elucidate it a little by adding a few comments. 

A. — As regards the industrial pursuits, it 
is necessary to have a clear perception of 
the child's attitude towards work. Hitherto 
the schools have commonly assumed that the 
child should "work" during many years at 
formal studies which lie remote from his 
present experience: the working classes have 
approved because they believed that such 
studies are not really laborious, but are 
associated with a superior life of leisure; 
while the authorities who impose such work 
on children do so from attachment to a 
scholastic tradition which regards work at 
arithmetic or writing as something superior 
to work with a rake or chisel. 

Two results have followed: (i) When the 
scholars show distaste for unsuitable work, 
the teachers tend to believe that children 
are by nature indisposed to work, and there- 
upon they either force them by discipline to 
perform tasks, or yield the position and pro- 
vide so-called "interesting" studies as sub- 
stitutes, (ii) The scholars themselves come 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 211 

to have a false attitude towards industry; 
the instinctive tendency of human beings to 
be seriously and usefully occupied becomes 
atrophied by long attendance at school where 
"work" is identified with lessons which lead 
nowhere: where holidays and recreation are 
constantly eulogized at the expense of the 
pursuits demanded by school. Thus an un- 
natural type is created and thrown on the 
industrial market, namely, the man who has 
learned contempt for work, esteeming it 
merely as a means to wages, believing that 
only those periods of life are worth while in 
which he is set free for holiday. The remedy 
is surely to revert to the older tradition 
which was universal before the days of school- 
ing, and which now abides in many sensible 
homes — that is, to regard the child both at 
school and home as a fellow-labourer; not, 
indeed, as a wage-earner (although there is no 
reason why he should not earn pocket money), 
but as a serious and intelligent partner in the 
simpler tasks of the industrial community. 

Child labour has been exploited by parents 
and employers under economic pressure, and 
therefore by a natural reaction public opinion 
at present desires to exclude the child from 
a share in industrial achievement; and many 
working men of the best type in trades unions 
will dissent from the opinion here expressed. 



212 THE SCHOOL 

But he is the worst enemy of the industrial 
community who seeks to perpetuate scholastic 
traditions where these alienate the rising 
generation from the activities of the home 
and the shop. Neither wealthy nor indigent 
children can be safely trained between the 
stages of infancy and of adolescence without 
some of the discipline which comes from in- 
dustrial and domestic occupation. 

B. — As regards the cultural studies, which 
we have treated as a sequel to the fanciful 
"plays" of the Kindergarten. We place 
these second in the scheme of pursuits simply 
because this broader experience, where our 
minds pass beyond the practical to the 
imaginative and the ideal, can never safely 
be permitted to occupy the centre of our 
activities, either in childhood or in age. To 
devise a curriculum whose staple consists of 
drama and poetry, of history and geography, 
where the learner is merely a spectator, is to 
create for our scholars an unreal world : they 
have no climax to their activities; they accept 
stimuli, but produce no result. The output 
is the type of man who spends the day in 
witnessing a cricket match and the evening 
in attending the theatre. It is true enough 
that as one type of experience these studies 
have their place: our culture, indeed, largely 
consists in reviving for pleasure and leisure 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 213 

recollections of ideal modes of life and thought 
which have been depicted in the art and 
literature of the past; for example, we may 
not hunt or drink, but we like to sing "John 
Peel" and "The Leather Bottel." So with 
our children: it is well, it is even necessary, 
they should sing and recite and act; they 
can, still better, be encouraged to construct 
their own dramas and their own songs. Their 
power over the world, both ideal and practi- 
cal, is increased if, as John Dewey advocates, 
their simple industrial activities are associated 
with the problems which confronted primitive 
man; they will gladly play at being Cave 
Dweller, or Hiawatha, or Robinson Crusoe; 
they turn with delight to the great classics 
of that earlier day when the world was both 
young and old: the story of Joseph the 
Dreamer, of Ulysses the Wanderer, should 
be the dear possession of every boy and girl. 
But if these experiences are gained merely 
as luxuries, merely as amusing reading or 
intellectual exercise, without a related back- 
ground of practical activity, they tend to 
distort the child's view of life. In school 
practice these cultural studies, literature, 
history, geography, partake far too much 
of that futile form of class exercise called 
"chalk and talk," where the teacher alone 
masters the pursuit and expounds it to a 



214 THE SCHOOL 

docile audience: or it is treated as matter 
merely to be read and learned; in such a case 
the text-book discourses and the audience is 
still more docile. The reform here advocated 
would not only relegate such pursuits to the 
second place, but would improve the method, 
by calling at every turn for co-operative 
activity from the scholars, while the teacher 
falls into the background and acts merely as 
a guide. 

A word of caution may be in place as to 
the field from which these cultural studies 
should be garnered — especially as regards the 
topics of history. It is true that the child, 
as the heir of our ancestors, delights in blood- 
and-thunder stories and is willing to give his 
attention to battles and wars; but it is surely 
unwise to whet his appetite. He is to live in 
a world which is longing for peace: important 
as it no doubt is, for nations as for individuals, 
to be equipped for self-defence, can we justify 
a scheme of history-teaching in which Caesar 
or William the Conqueror occupies the stage? 
It is a matter of common knowledge in the 
United States that the history-reader em- 
ployed in schools did much to keep alive the 
resentment felt by Americans towards Great 
Britain long after the occasion was passed: 
and the same is true of France and Germany. 
Where the teacher selects historical material 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 215 

from social problems, allying these with prac- 
tical interests in the development of crafts 
and industries, he is presenting not only a 
more accurate picture of bygone days, but is 
adjusting more wisely the outlook of youth 
on the modern world. 

C. — By putting drill and technical exercises 
into the third place we are not desiring to 
lessen their importance, but to insist that our 
modern world can no longer afford to shut 
up children to pursuits which are empty of 
content. Our so-called scholastic discipline 
has consisted too much in setting the mind 
to perform acts (as, e. g., in syntax, in stocks 
and shares) on methods which the practical, 
sensible world has long discarded as obsolete: 
we simply cannot afford to waste our chil- 
dren's time thus in an age where so much has 
to be learned, where with every generation 
the field of knowledge is so vastly enlarged. 

These technical exercises, even including 
spelling, which appears so amazing a bugbear 
to many, would not prove formidable if they 
were kept in their place as subordinate to 
industry and culture. Children, we assert 
once more, welcome repetition and drill when 
they see some use for it; when such motives 
are relied upon, a maximum of attention is 
secured which enables the scholar to master 
his drill with greater speed and accuracy. 



216 THE SCHOOL 

After all, the essentials of arithmetic, reading, 
composition, are not so vast in their extent, 
even with our complicated tables of weights 
and measures, and our incongruous spelling: 
there is plenty of time in the years of school, 
if a short space be daily allotted for daily 
repetition. 

7. Finally, this scheme of pursuits, cover- 
ing the years from seven or eight to twelve, 
appears to afford no place for two branches 
which figure largely in regular school time- 
tables, namely, science and language, the 
one formulating the ideas which man or boy 
collects from his varied experience in industry 
or culture, the other analysing and reflecting 
upon that supreme art by which experience 
is "expressed." In one sense we are not 
prepared to admit the claim of either of these 
to a share in the school day, for as organized 
studies they belong to the next stage of 
development. This is not to say that the 
child is to neglect either science or language; 
on the contrary, whether the time-table 
neglects them or not, his mind will be curious 
and active, seeking to find, on the empirical 
level, an explanation for all that happens 
about him; and the teacher, craftsman with 
tools, or artist with the weapons of culture, 
will always be ready to afford explanation. 
He will take time, as occasion arises, from the 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 217 

periods devoted to industrial or cultural 
occupations to treat separately of any topics 
in natural science or in the science of language 
when explanation seems required in order 
to help the young mind to master a situation. 
But the limit in the function of science and 
language should at this stage be rigidly 
observed: the child is indeed a thinker, but 
not as yet a deep thinker: all the science he 
needs is such as bears immediately on the 
problems which are presented by his occupa- 
tions. If at this age he accumulates a rich 
store of empirical knowledge, he will delight 
at his next stage of development to organize 
some of it into those more precise studies that 
we call science and language. Again we must 
protect ourselves from misunderstanding: 
there are precocious children who appear ripe 
for such studies long before twelve; and 
since clever scholars often become school- 
masters, the opinion tends to prevail that 
intellectual pursuits can be profitably pressed 
to the front in childhood; but, once more 
we must first provide for the average scholar : 
it is easy enough to give scope for special 
capacity when it is displayed in any indi- 
vidual case. 

There may appear to be some inconsistency 
here as regards mathematical science, for we 
have already admitted arithmetic to a promi- 



218 THE SCHOOL 

nent place, as one of the "three R's" to be 
diligently exercised in drill. But the dis- 
tinction between empirical mathematics pur- 
sued in close relation to practical problems 
and the more abstract treatment of number 
and space is well understood : the latter finds 
a welcome in many minds during adolescence, 
but the former, even if elementary algebra and 
practical geometry be added to the arithmetic, 
is a congenial pursuit before the age of twelve 
just so far as it is limited to what is mechanical 
and practical. 

The same is, of course, true of language, 
including the use of foreign tongues. An 
excellent start can be made in foreign speech 
between the years nine and twelve, for by 
nine or ten a child is old enough to realize 
the possibilities involved in acquaintance with 
a neighbouring people; and he is still young 
enough and plastic enough to mould his 
organs of speech with ease, so as to acquire 
the new habits necessary to correct expres- 
sion. But we have accumulated sufficient 
evidence, from generations of futile failure, to 
warrant us at the present day in holding no 
quarter with those who would keep children 
at this time of life, occupied with grammar 
and translation, from either the ancient or 
the modern tongues. The moral discipline 
which, in the last resort, is presumed to be 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 219 

secured by such employment can be more 
directly gained by the exacting demands of 
serious industry. 

8. The Secondary School Curriculum. — By 
dwelling at some length on the pursuits of 
the primary school we can more rapidly note 
what should be the characteristic features of 
curricula planned for the years of adolescence. 
Two cardinal principles seem to press for 
notice: (a) After the age of twelve, more at- 
tention is required for those individual differ- 
ences, whether due to inheritance, to capacity, 
to environment, or to opportunity, which 
engaged our notice in Chapter V. These have 
now become so pronounced as to demand 
varying types of school experience for differing 
scholars; (b) every youth, boy or girl, even if 
able to earn some wages, needs to be retained 
under strong control until he has completed 
the first period of adolescence, L e. until the 
age of eighteen or thereabouts. In olden days 
this was well understood: if a lad was not at 
school he was a page at court or an apprentice 
in a shop. At the present day the increasing 
demand for continuation schools, and for the 
extension of compulsory schooling beyond the 
age of fourteen, shows that we are not con- 
tent with our modern laxity as regards the 
disciplinary control of youth: the hooligan 
and the apache are the direct outcome of our 



220 THE SCHOOL 

dereliction of duty, and there is no more 
pressing problem in education at the present 
day than that concerned with the oversight 
and training of adolescents. 1 

Unhappily, progress is hindered at every 
turn by the cleavage between industry and 
culture. It is assumed that if a lad continues 
his secondary schooling, he is, and should be 
on that very ground, divorced from wage- 
earning or from industrial employment. 
Hence our adolescent society is sharply di- 
vided into two groups: the proletariat, who 
at fourteen or earlier assume a status of eco- 
nomic independence before they are ripe for it, 
is cut off from these secondary scholars who 
imbibe scholastic lore in an isolated environ- 
ment. Popular sentiment would have us 
increase the proportion of the latter in the 
belief that the indefinite extension of school- 
ing as enjoyed at present by the leisured 
class is an unquestioned benefit. But the 
study of adolescent life shows that the great 
majority of boys and girls from all ranks of 
society on leaving the years of childhood are 
ready to enter on some vocation, or at any 
rate on employment closely allied to a voca- 
tion; all that is needed is that for some years 
they should be only partially employed at 
industrial work, and instructed for the rest of 

1 Compare pp. 163, 164. 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 221 

the day in matters which throw light upon 
the processes of industry. 1 

The minority whose superior capacities 
or environment mark them out as likely to 
profit by a prolonged course of culture and 
of scientific training are at present, by our 
European tradition, cut off during many years 
from association not only with gainful pur- 
suits but even, in most cases, from the simpler 
duties of the household. But apart from 
prejudice there seems to be no reason why 
this sharp division between the two groups 
of adolescents should be maintained by those 
who organize their public training in sec- 
ondary institutions. It seems clear that a 
regimen which deprives our youth, boys and 
girls, from any share in industrial or domestic 
toil goes counter to their natural instincts of 
social service and tends to unfit them for a 
proper understanding of the world. As we 
saw in Chapter VII, the New World here is 
offering an example to the Old which may be 
worthy of consideration. 2 

If the force of these two principles be 
admitted, the organization of secondary 
education in any area would take a different 
aspect from that hitherto approved by State 
authorities. Firstly, the officers of State 

1 Compare p. 162. 

2 See pp. 136, 137. 



222 THE SCHOOL 

would exercise a certain compulsion over all 
up to the age of eighteen, and would provide 
for all a variety of courses of study, some 
of which would be partial, i. e. occupying 
only a portion each day, and leaving time for 
wage-earning, while others would be complete, 
giving larger scope to the more intellectual 
and capable to devote their chief attention 
to humanistic, scientific, or artistic pursuits. 
Secondly, as a matter of social control the 
essence of this organization would lie in re- 
garding the whole of this youthful society 
as one body of adolescent scholars, sharing a 
corporate life such as we shall discuss in the 
following chapter, adapted to their stage of 
development, and receiving in suitable groups 
whatever instruction is needed to prepare 
them adequately to discharge their future 
functions in life. Since these functions include 
not only the pursuit of a vocation, but an 
intelligent participation in the life of the 
community, it seems clear that while a part 
of this instruction should be "vocational," 
i. e. planned in direct relation to immediate 
activities in trade or commerce, another part 
should be just as avowedly liberal or general, 
and pursued as a sequel to the general elemen- 
tary curriculum of the period of childhood. 

Space forbids our entering further upon 
the lively controversies which would open up 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 223 

if we attempted in greater detail to outline 
types of secondary school curricula: but we 
can discern the general trend of opinion if we 
examine the requirements made by the 
universities in their matriculation examina- 
tions, for these are designed to mark the close 
of the secondary school period. These always 
include mathematics and some form of lit- 
erature and language study, while a choice 
is usually permitted as between English his- 
tory, one or other of the natural sciences, and 
geography. In other words the ideal seems 
to be to require the pupil of the secondary 
school to pay some attention both to scientific 
and humanistic studies, but to be indifferent 
as to whether he finds interest in the fine arts. 
Now since university regulations exercise 
so powerful an incentive both to parents 
and teachers in secondary schools, it follows 
that the schools teach what the universities 
ask for, and what the university examination 
omits is given but a minor place in the second- 
ary school programme. Thus the secondary 
school largely takes the character of a fitting 
school for the university, although less than 
ten per cent, of the scholars continue their 
schooling in any higher institution of learning 
after the age of eighteen. This restriction 
of function was clearly pointed out by the 
Bryce Commission on Secondary Education, 



224 THE SCHOOL 

and affords a constant theme of discussion, 
but no effective change can be brought about 
until the entire problem of school leaving 
certificates is handled thoroughly by State 
authorities as suggested in Chapter VI. 

Meanwhile we may venture an opinion 
that, while it is unwise at eighteen to prescribe 
a comprehensive examination during one 
week * in a series of studies which have 
covered four or six years, the curriculum of 
a secondary school (when the scholars are 
devoting the whole day to study) should 
include not only mathematics, the mother 
of natural science, and the literature and 
language of the native country; but space 
should be found for an elementary acquaint- 
ance with biology and with physics, since 
modern life presupposes some familiarity with 
natural phenomena, with the language of at 
least one foreign nation (since he knows not 
England who only England knows), and with 
some form oi artistic expression in music or 
in arts of representation. But with such 
proviso, we must once more claim of the 
adolescent that his success in lessons will 
depend far more upon the intensity with 
which he develops power in his favourite 
pursuits than upon the number of "subjects" 
with which he makes only a bowing acquaint- 

1 See p. 125. 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 225 

ance. All who have taught boys and girls 
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen will 
admit that capacity, although it may be 
"general" in its scope, tends always to ex- 
tremes: the enthusiasm of the adolescent 
leads him to devote all his energies to one 
goal, sometimes from affection for a teacher, 
sometimes from a bias created purely by acci- 
dental circumstances. Although to outward 
seeming the youth may be dull and spiritless, 
there is always a vein of adventure in the 
inner spirit: the spirit of achievement is 
awake, and it is the lever by which the 
teacher, if he will, can spur his scholars to 
rapid conquest — each of them following his 
own bent to some extent while accepting the 
strong control, both intellectual and social, 
which is needed to tame the vagaries of 
adolescent adventure. 

9. Thus the secondary curriculum gradu- 
ally takes shape. On the one hand it should 
impose on every scholar a minimum of cul- 
tural pursuits, of which English literature 
may be taken as typical on the humanistic 
side and mathematics or physics on the 
scientific; on the other hand more and more 
time should be freely granted year by year 
for the indulgence of special tastes, for the 
intense and vivid acquirement of pursuits 
which, either by accident or from original 



226 THE SCHOOL 

capacity, the youth has chosen for his own: 
these last will be closely allied with the general 
trend of the vocation which he has idealized 
for his future career: and the more closely 
the two can be identified the better the result. 
It may be granted that in many cases the 
vocation which a youth selects during adoles- 
cence is not a final choice. Often enough both 
men and women in later years change their 
mind, or circumstances compel a change; 
but youth is the time for trial: a vocation is 
idealized and the preparation for it turns 
the callow youth into the capable man. 

Among such elective studies we should be 
willing to grant an honourable place to the 
fine arts or handicrafts at the one extreme 
and to classical languages and literatures at 
the other. The latter, indeed, in their finer 
development are more adapted for college 
than for school, but bright young minds 
should not be held back from the mastery of 
learning. In helping to guide the choice of 
studies for young people, parents readily 
notice that the classical curriculum has advan- 
tages, as regards at any rate the education of 
boys, over all the rest. For it has been and is 
pursued by many of the ablest teachers: a 
scholar who selects it is associated in many 
schools with a fine company of comrades and 
rivals; further, the technique of its teaching 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 227 

has been perfected, and the incentives offered 
for success assist greatly to support the sys- 
tem. Thus in many cases the choice of Latin 
and Greek for bright boys in the secondary 
school is found to "work" best, although the 
theoretical arguments sometimes set forth by 
the friends of the classics are unsound. 

Secondary schools, such as we here desider- 
ate, planned to meet varied needs are of course 
not easy to establish or to organize: a staff 
is required in which every type of academic 
and artistic power is represented: instead of 
the rigid uniformity of a German Gymnasium 
or Realschule every scholar, at least in the 
higher forms of the school, needs its own 
time-table. But such difficulties are being 
solved by experience; when a body of school- 
teachers, encouraged by parents and trustees, 
are convinced of the importance of a wide 
choice of elective pursuits, machinery for pro- 
viding each youth with the necessary instruc- 
tion or guidance can be usually devised with 
fair success. Illustrations might be quoted 
from many of our large Secondary Schools, 
both in England and America. 

Among the minimum of compulsory studies 
which we desire to exact from all secondary 
scholars there is one for which a special place 
is demanded, if indeed it may not be regarded 
as a central theme from which literature and 



228 THE SCHOOL 

other humanistic studies should be drawn. 
We refer to what is often called moral instruc- 
tion, 1 a pursuit which, rightly understood, 
implies the revelation to the adolescent of 
his higher nature. It should include so much 
biology (physiology) as is necessary to inter- 
pret bodily functions, both in personal and 
social hygiene; and in the later years of 
adolescence can well introduce the youth now 
approaching manhood to problems of social 
and political conduct. 1 These may be studied 
through the medium of the great classics, 
whether ancient writers in Holy Writ, classi- 
cal teachers of Greek and Rome, or our 
modern teachers in poetry and prose. The 
essential feature is the dawn of the philo- 
sophic, reflective spirit; and here, more than 
elsewhere, success in teaching depends upon 
the sympathetic idealism of the teacher, 
whose delicate task it is to introduce the youth 
to an inner sanctuary where the select among 
mankind hold communion apart and "walk 
with God." Some instruction of this kind 
should be part of the initiation of the youth 
before completing these earlier years of 
adolescence, before obtaining emancipation 
from public control, whether to enter fully 
upon the freedom of an industrial career, or to 
proceed to college, where, although his free- 

1 Compare pp. 67, 68. 



THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 229 

dom is more restrained, he has some choice 
either to accept or to refuse the counsels of 
the wise. 

10. Our sketch of the relations between 
the primary and the secondary curriculum 
may appear uncertain at one point, for we 
have not carried the primary curriculum 
beyond the age of twelve, whereas under 
present conditions, in most countries both 
of Europe and America, the superior limit 
for primary schooling is fourteen. If, how- 
ever, as proposed above, public authorities 
take legal authority over all young people 
up to the age of eighteen, the break at four- 
teen becomes a matter of minor importance. 
In the opinion of the present writer the age of 
twelve is quite late enough for a conclusion 
to be reached as to a scholar's capacity which 
shall decide whether he is destined for a low 
grade of industrial employment, or is worth 
educating for a more responsible calling. In 
the former case, his last two years of complete 
schooling (Standards VII and VIII) would 
be partly occupied with industrial pursuits 
allied to those which will engage him as a 
wage-earner after the age of fourteen. When 
released by the completion of this course, 
he would still belong to the school community 
receiving vocational training for a few hours 
every week to interpret the meaning of his 



230 THE SCHOOL 

trade, and united on the lines to be discussed 
in the following chapter in the social life of 
his fellows until the age of eighteen. Those, 
on the other hand, who are not designed to 
join the ranks of wage-earners at fourteen 
would, as is already the case under our Eng- 
lish system, be introduced at twelve years of 
age to the curriculum of the secondary school. 
As regards both groups, the limit indicated 
by birthdays is merely an indication of an 
average attainment. The law should not 
be content with an attainment of age, but 
should always require evidence that the 
scholar has gained the experience which the 
school pursuits afford. In other words, release 
from the tutelage of school and acceptance for 
service as a wage-earner should depend upon 
capacity as registered by a certificate and 
not merely upon the passage of years. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 

1. In the opening chapters we laid stress 
upon that aspect of school which regards 
it as an institution for social experience, 
as well as a place of learning, but this topic 
requires further treatment. For the more 
deeply one examines the personal life of 
children, or their qualities and attitudes 
when modified by school experience, the more 
is one impressed by the decisive influence 
exercised by the scholars, in every type of 
school, upon each other. Even where an 
adult, looking back upon his school-days, is 
not able to trace this relation of cause and 
effect, the effect may have been produced, for 
the influences of mind upon mind largely 
operate in the region of the subconscious. 

It is the more important that some space 
should be found for the discussion of cor- 
porate life because educational theory until 
recently has taken so little account of it. 
Indeed, one would almost suppose, when 
consulting most of the text-books written 

231 



232 THE SCHOOL 

in the nineteenth century, that the educa- 
tive process was to be conducted for one 
pupil alone; as, indeed, was the case at an 
earlier epoch when it was a favourite exer- 
cise for tutors to discourse at length upon the 
Education of a Prince. It is the more remark- 
able that this individual trend should have 
been maintained in English expositions of 
pedagogy, since our practice has been quite 
otherwise. It is not too much to say that, 
apart from a few disquisitions of a theoretic 
nature such as the essays by Herbert Spencer, 
the outstanding contribution to educational 
progress made by English teachers has been in 
this field. Foreign students of education from 
the time when Wiese visited Rugby in the 
'fifties have always been ready to testify to 
the singular success with which the English- 
man has thrown himself heart and soul into 
the social life of his community, and, without 
any pretence of sociological theory as basis for 
his practice, has directed the organization of 
his school community with results which are 
rarely witnessed in foreign countries. This 
distinction has been mainly achieved in our 
secondary schools, for reasons which will 
appear below, but the same qualities in 
English teachers which have served the 
secondary school so well have been at work 
and have borne fruit in some of the primary 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 233 

schools. But the primary schools have been 
administered by men who have lived apart 
from practice, and hence it is not surprising 
that small place has been here found for 
the expression of sounder views of schooling. 
It was, in fact, some eight years ago that a 
paragraph was for the first time inserted in 
The Code to remind the teacher of the 
importance of "the corporate life of school." 
2. Thus our theory of corporate life rests 
mainly upon the practice of our secondary 
schools; and it is worth while to note the 
circumstances which happily combined to 
establish this practice on so firm a foundation. 
Already, in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, it had become the habit in England 
to send lads to boarding-schools at a tender 
age. Secure from invasion by a foreign foe, 
there was a freedom in England both for 
country residence and for travel to which 
the Continent was to be a stranger during 
many generations. Hence, among other 
social results, the boarding-school came to be 
the fashion in England, while the city day- 
school was most popular on the Continent. 
When, therefore, the industrial revolution 
brought about a sudden increase (especially 
in the north of England) of wealthy families 
desirous of a class education for their sons, the 
endowed grammar school, open to receive 



234 THE SCHOOL 

boarders, was ready to hand, and the earlier 
part of the nineteenth century witnessed the 
rapid multiplication not at first of new schools, 
but of the numbers in attendance at those of 
old foundation. At first these schools received 
little care and attention; and it is not surpris- 
ing that a serious writer of the day described 
them, filled as they were with ill-disciplined 
and savage lads, as "the seats and nurseries 
of vice." Very soon, however, the conscience 
of the community was stirred, and, at the 
appropriate moment, Thomas Arnold came 
on the scene with a genius of the special qual- 
ity required to meet the crisis. He studied 
the nature of the adolescent, 1 and, while curb- 
ing with stern authority the instincts of 
licence, gave sanction to the demand that 
youth makes for a measure of freedom. Find- 
ing that the older scholars in such a society 
already wielded authority over the younger, 
he legalized this authority, placing responsi- 
bility on those whose attainment and char- 
acter fitted them to bear it, and approving a 
period of service as "fags" for those who are 
younger. 

Recognizing, again, that the large school 
provides a life too complex for the best 
growth of the individual, he saw the value 
of the smaller community dwelling in the 

1 See Chapter V, p. 77. 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 235 

boarding-house, living its own life, although 
sharing the larger interests of the whole 
society. Himself a man of active physical 
vigour, he recognized, too, the value of hardy 
exercise in games. These youths recalled to 
him the barbaric temperament of early man, 
and the growth in fortitude, which the bar- 
barian sought through hunting and through 
war, found a substitute in the contests of the 
playfield. Finally, he realized that an organ- 
ized system was of little worth unless con- 
trolled by a succession of teachers of high 
ideals devoted to its service. Hence he sought 
and found men of his own stamp, ready to 
share with him in sustaining that permanent 
tone of "moral thoughtf ulness " which he 
preached as the ideal quality for a R-ugby 
school-boy. 

Arnold appears, then, as the genius of 
this renaissance in "Public School" educa- 
tion, but he freely acknowledged that some 
among his contemporaries were as fully 
alive as he to the urgency of the task; and 
when, after only fourteen years as head 
master, he suddenly died in the prime of 
life, it was soon evident that his work, not 
only for Rugby but for all her sister schools, 
had been accomplished. His pupil Stanley 
provided for succeeding generations a record 
of his life, which ranks among our great 



236 THE SCHOOL 

biographies, and this, together with the more 
popular eulogy in Tom Brown 9 s School-days, 
helped greatly to spread throughout England 
an appreciation of the principles which under- 
lie his reforms, and made easy the task of his 
friends and disciples who, in dozens of schools, 
both old endowed and newly instituted, put 
into practice what they had learned at Rugby. 

Looking back on the history of the British 
Empire during the intervening years, we can 
now recognize that these reforms were timely. 
For the boys who learned to rule and to obey 
in English schools were called in increasing 
numbers year by year to a sterner discipline 
in East and West wherever the British flag 
was carried. 

I have here condensed in briefest form a 
record which, while of prime importance to 
"the governing and directing classes" whom 
it immediately concerns, is equally significant 
for all students of education, since it affords 
overwhelming evidence of the importance of 
appropriate organization for corporate ends, 
more especially at the period of adolescence. 
A larger volume might properly notice some 
important criticisms of Arnold and his influ- 
ence, but the main facts in this unique chapter 
of English education are undisputed. 

3. Now what is of value for the upper 
classes should be of service also to youths in 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 237 

the middle and lower classes. If for the 
benefit of their own stock the wealthier fami- 
lies among us maintain a system so soundly 
based upon psychology, it would surely seem 
right that the State, for the public benefit, 
should sanction these principles in organizing 
secondary schooling of all grades for the pro- 
letariat and the middle classes as well as for 
the wealthy. Already something has been 
done. It is now fifty years since Dr. Percival 
(the venerable Bishop of Hereford), when 
taking charge of a new school at Clifton, 
adapted the Rugby system to the needs of 
day-boys, and in the interval many secondary 
schools of all grades have followed his example 
in establishing a "House" system, so that the 
youth of our cities may share to some degree 
in an active social life and discipline which is 
congenial to their nature. It is being more 
and more recognized both in England and 
abroad that it is dangerous to the growth of 
character to unite a large group of adolescents 
in a school society, if provision is only made 
for instruction in the class-room, if the 
teachers are merely instructors, or if outlet 
fails to be provided in play-fields for the dis- 
cipline that comes from contesting the game 
with one's fellows. 

This reform is urgent, and it needs the 
energy of an Arnold to impress it upon the 



238 THE SCHOOL 

imagination of our English people. The 
"Public Schools," while they have rendered 
eminent service to the empire, have by their 
own confession done little for domestic and 
civic government; cut off in boarding-schools 
from the environment of civic or county life, 
the boys learn, even without instruction, to 
despise the homely functions of a city coun- 
cillor. And in the last decade we have wit- 
nessed, as a sequel to the Act of 1902, a rapid 
growth of municipal secondary schools to 
which thousands of boys and girls are flock- 
ing, often with the vaguest notions at times 
either among teachers or parents of the 
functions which the secondary school, when 
infused by a noble ideal, can discharge. 
Since Arnold's day our municipalities have 
become as great in their national influence as 
were the medieval cities of Italy, and their 
institutions of culture deserve and must re- 
ceive the best and most devoted service if 
those qualities which have created the British 
Empire are to be retained at home on behalf 
of our own people, the democracy of Britain. 
At the opposite pole of society some effort 
has been made, on a philanthropic basis, to 
reproduce among the rough-and-ready wage- 
earners in the back street some of the qualities 
of the English public-school boy. The success 
of Mr. Charles Russell, of Manchester, and of 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 239 

others in conducting Lads' Clubs has been 
significant, 1 and points the way to the next 
step in legislation to which we have already 
referred, viz. the recognition by the State of 
its obligations towards youth in all grades of 
society. The "nipper" or the corner-boy can 
be trained in a corporate society and at the 
same time make some progress in culture if he 
is placed in a community of his own age, with 
provision of land and buildings where he can 
find elbow-room, and with teachers ready to 
be companions as well as instructors. Until 
the nation is prepared to spend freely for 
such ends, it must continue to spend even 
more in the repair of neglect by the support 
of reformatories and gaols. 

4. We have so far dwelt solely on those 
aspects of corporate life where the scholars 
are grouped for what may be called out-of- 
school purposes, apart from the life of the 
class-room. We have assumed, and the 
assumption is justified, that in every society 
the scholars will desire to group themselves 
and carry on a social life apart from what is 
prescribed for them in the successive grades 
of a curriculum during lesson-hours. In his 
class-room the scholar joins a new circle of 
comrades each year, and even if some of these 
remain together for successive years, the cor- 

Discussed in another connection on p. 164. 



240 THE SCHOOL 

porate life of a class (Standard, Form, or 
Grade) is broken up and reconstituted each 
session. Hence an institution which is only 
divided into class groups for the purposes of 
teaching never displays so active a corporate 
life as one which provides machinery anal- 
ogous to that of the "House" system of 
our English secondary day-schools, where a 
scholar remains attached in membership to 
the little club which is called a "House" 
during the whole period of his attendance. 

Nevertheless, it need not be assumed that 
the scholar is uninfluenced by the social 
environment of the class-room. On the con- 
trary, teachers who understand their business 
will always admit that, unless the class be of 
an unwieldy size, beyond thirty, the process 
of learning is stimulated greatly by social 
exchange between the members. The secret 
of class management lies in recognizing to the 
full the need for inner unity among all who 
share in the task, when each contributes his 
part towards its completion. Under such 
conditions a class, sharing week by week in 
the common pursuit of intellectual projects, 
exhibits the marks of community life, and 
where these projects, under the guidance of 
a genial teacher, provoke keen enthusiasm, 
the educational result may reach to deeper 
springs of behaviour than can be achieved by 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 241 

out-of-school organizations connected with 
games. Such a result is especially noticeable 
in schools, whether secondary or primary, 
which keep the scholar working for many 
periods of the week with the same group in a 
Form or Standard; whereas when a time- 
table is devised which breaks up the scholars 
into different groups or "sets" for every 
branch of study, we witness an extreme of 
individualistic teaching: both the instructor 
and the scholars are comparative strangers to 
each other, and little advantage can be taken 
of the intellectual stimulus that comes from 
familiar acquaintance. These are matters 
which concern the internal direction of a 
school, and may possibly be regarded as out 
of place in this volume; but the point merits 
the attention also of those who are concerned 
in external control, for it is they who, under 
the pressure of public opinion, so often put 
the teacher into such a situation that he is 
compelled, against his will, to break up the 
unity of a class. For it is the public which is 
demanding the introduction of new studies 
into the school, and new studies usually imply 
a re-shifting of the teaching body and of the 
class organization. Hence those who pre- 
scribe curricula for schools should never be 
too positive or detailed in their demands; 
they should recognize that the most important 



242 THE SCHOOL 

feature of good teaching is witnessed in the 
steady flow of interest, of class and teacher 
together, maintained with increasing delight 
from week to week. Even if the subject- 
matter which this little community handles 
is not exactly such as trustees or the public 
might desire, these may rest assured that the 
educational result is of a far better quality 
than could be gained by breaking up class 
unity, either by forcing new topics of in- 
struction which the teacher could not so well 
undertake, or by dissipating the attention of 
scholars over a multitude of subjects. 

These considerations will be seen to have 
more weight as regards the primary school 
than for later stages of growth, since the 
younger scholars are less competent to work 
in independence of their fellows or of the 
teacher. Thus, while in the secondary school 
scarcely too much weight can be attached to 
a social organization devised apart from the 
curriculum, in the primary school the balance 
weighs on the other side; it is the curriculum 
itself, both the pursuits selected and the 
method of handling these, that needs to be 
"socialized." And we thus find support, 
from a fresh point of view, for those changes 
in the primary curriculum which occupied 
us in the last chapter. For the practical 
employments in art and industry which we 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 243 

have put in the forefront among school pur- 
suits find their motive in social needs. 1 Thus 
the class of a primary school re-shapes itself 
to our imagination not so much as a group 
of individuals sitting at separate desks, each 
imbibing instruction for himself from a 
teacher or a book, but rather as a hive of busy 
workers, broken up, it may be, into smaller 
groups, but uniting in a common purpose to 
be embodied in some concrete and tangible 
result, behind which the teacher alone dis- 
cerns an educational result of deeper and 
more lasting value. 

5. Apart from the day-school organization 
many efforts have been made, such as Church 
Lads' Brigades and the like, to meet these 
social needs of the young, for the projects 
undertaken can only be executed in a spirit 
of co-operative effort. In the Boy Scout 
organization, which is spreading so rapidly 

1 The school at present is engaged largely upon the futile 
task of Sisyphus. It is endeavouring to form practically an 
intellectual habit in children for use in a social life which is, 
as it would almost seem, carefully and purposely kept away 
from any vital contact with the child who is thus undergoing 
training. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage 
in social life. To form habits of usefulness and serviceableness 
apart from any direct social need and motive, and apart from 
any existing social situation is, to the letter, teaching the 
child to swim by going through motions outside of the water. 
The most indispensable condition is left out, and the results 
are correspondingly futile. — Dewey: Educational Essays, p. 35. 



244 THE SCHOOL 

both in England and America, we have a 
forceful example of the possibilities of cor- 
porate life among boys when pursuits «%re 
chosen which correspond to their stage of 
development. General Baden-Powell is not 
a professed psychologist, but he has undoubt- 
edly diagnosed with rare insight the qualities 
that distinguish boys between the ages of 
ten and fourteen. At present his plans are 
conducted outside the machinery of our 
schools, but it will be a misfortune if the 
pedantry of school officials prevents the 
appropriation by our school communities of 
all that is best in this unique enterprise; a 
teacher will do his work among boys none the 
worse if he takes the lead among them as a 
scoutmaster. If contact between the two is 
not somehow established, neither can achieve 
full success, for it is not well for a boy to 
be distracted by membership in so many 
communities; he already has his home circle, 
and often the society of a Sunday-school, 
which claim his attention; the day-school is, 
or should be, a powerful social bond; if now 
the Patrol be superadded, its success in 
absorbing his attention cannot fail to detract 
from the success of the rest. And it should 
be noticed that, although this movement has 
chiefly concerned itself with boys, the social 
nature of girls is worthy of the same careful 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 245 

study, with plans adapted to their distinctive 
needs. I venture, therefore, to suggest that 
the time is ripe for the serious study of this 
enterprise by teachers of the young; if, as 
a result, new life and vigour is brought into 
the primary school, it will not be the first 
occasion on which the teaching body has 
accepted instruction from without. 

6. Great, indeed, has been the progress of 
primary schools, and the present writer would 
be the last to depreciate the eminent services 
rendered by successive generations of ele- 
mentary teachers, who, with little encourage- 
ment from other social groups, have laid so 
thoroughly the foundations of the system. 
But the very success which they have achieved 
leads the teachers, and the public whom they 
serve, to be dissatisfied with the achievement. 
Only recently an eminent public servant, Mr. 
Holmes, on retiring from a lifetime of service 
in the oversight of these schools, has made 
a startling pronouncement on the need for 
drastic change. Although in detail the reme- 
dies he proposes appear to differ with much 
that is suggested in these pages, the reader of 
his volume entitled What is and What might be 
will discern the same general current of opin- 
ion which is moving towards reform both in 
the Old World and the New. This work of 
Mr. Holmes, like the present volume, invites 



246 THE SCHOOL 

the attention not only of teachers but of the 
general public, to whom in the last resort 
the teacher must appeal if his ideals are to 
be realized. 

And in this connection we may properly 
conclude by noting one aspect of school life 
which is happily finding increased recognition 
year by year. As a social group both scholars 
and teachers tend to be cut off from the com- 
munity outside, but in the minds and hearts 
of the scholars there is always a desire to link 
up the separate interests of their life. The 
child delights to communicate to the home 
circle what has occupied his mind at school, 
and wise parents always respond to such 
impulses, and are glad to be permitted to play 
their part, not to interfere with the freedom 
of the teacher, but as partners in a common 
service. In the old days many teachers used 
to resent this partnership, regarding the 
parent merely as a hindrance to the success of 
their endeavours. But it is now seen that the 
parents in any neighbourhood form, as it 
were, a community of their own, which may 
be utilized as a powerful aid to sustain the 
teacher's efforts. Many plans are now 
adopted to enable parents to understand the 
meaning of these efforts, by inviting them 
to Parents' Evenings, or to Open Days. By 
such means not only is a union created in the 



CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 247 

children's minds between the home circle and 
the school circle, but the Family, which tends 
(as we saw in the third chapter) to be selfishly 
individualistic in defence of the single child, 
comes to an appreciation of the needs of the 
entire school, and is more willing to accept 
on the child's behalf the restrictions and limi- 
tations which the needs of the community 
impose on the liberty of the individual. And 
this interchange of interest between the school 
community and the public which supports it 
should be promoted by educational authori- 
ties as much as by the teachers, for it is only 
as parents and the public come to a better 
understanding of school needs that they will 
be prepared to furnish the means. Land and 
buildings, money and materials are required 
for the education of the young on a scale 
which would have astonished our predeces- 
sors ; these demands will be willingly conceded, 
and the education tax will be willingly paid, 
wherever parents are taken into confidence 
and enabled to realize the blessings which 
accrue to their offspring from a generous 
system of schooling. 

Reverting thus to the first chapters of this 
volume, we image the School as a civic insti- 
tution, taking rank side by side with the 
Family, the Church, and the State, combining 
all worthy elements in the commonwealth for 



248 THE SCHOOL 

the sake of those who will maintain its life in 
days to come. If such a picture still seems 
more of a dream than a reality, it provides 
at least a ground of faith; faith in a social 
reform which finds its surest and speediest 
harvest in caring for the young; faith in the 
coming race who will take up the burden of 
the ages at the point where teacher and parent 
lay it down. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 

In the present state of educational science, it is impossible 
to refer the reader to any comprehensive text-books which 
will cover the wide field surveyed in this volume. It is thought 
best, therefore, to give a few references for further reading 
on topics dealt with in successive chapters, and to add a 
short general list covering a wider range. 

CHAPTERS I-IIL— John Fiske, The Meaning of Infancy, 
N. M. Butler, The Meaning of Education', Davidson, History 
of Education, chaps, i-iii; Henderson, Principles of Education; 
Home, Philosophy of Education; Bagley, The Educative Pro- 
cess, chaps, i-iv; Verblen, The Leisure Class. 

CHAPTER IV.— As above, and add Dewey, "The Child 
and the Curriculum," and "Ethical Principles applied to 
Education" (monographs in vols, entitled The School and the 
Child and Educational Essays). For Rousseau, etc., see 
General List. For Physical Education, etc. — Clement Dukes, 
Health at School; Crowley or Hogarth on Medical Inspection 
of Schools; Margaret McMillan, The Child and the State; 
Board of Education, Reports of the Medical Department for 
1909, 1910. 

CHAPTER V.— Sully, Studies in Childhood, and Children's 
Ways; Stanley Hall, Aspects of Child Life; Slaughter, The 
Adolescent (popular and readable); Urwick, The Child's 
Mind; Irving King, The Psychology of Child Development; 
Mumford, The Dawn of Character; Higgs, Moral Development 
of the Child; Earl Barnes, Studies in Education; Welton, 
Psychology of Education. On backward children — Crowley, as 
above, Lapage, Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age. 
On supranormal children, etc. — Thorndike, Individuality; 

249 



250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Stern, in Amer. Journal of Educ. Psychy., Mar., April, 1911; 
Burt, Exper. Study of General Intelligence in Child Study, 
July, Oct., 1911; also reports of Superintendents of Educa- 
tion in Baltimore, Indianapolis, etc., U.S.A. 

CHAPTER VI. — Graham Balfour, Educational Systems of 
Great Britain and Ireland; Edwardes, Jones and Sykes, The 
Law of Public Education; Encyclopaedia Britannica, article on 
"Education" — a good account of English organization, and 
briefer sketches for foreign countries; Rein, Outlines of Peda- 
gogics; Henderson, Principles of Education, as above; Sadler, 
Outlines of Education Courses, contains many useful refer- 
ences; Board of Education, Special Inquiries and Reports, 
discuss many of the problems handled in this chapter; Fried. 
Paulsen, German Education, Past and Present (a translation); 
Riley, Sadler and Jackson, The Religious Question in Public 
Education; Evans and Claridge, J. Hirst HolloweU and the 
Education Movement. 

CHAPTER VII.— Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics; Findlay, 
Principles of Class Teaching, chaps, iv-xi; Royal Commission 
on Secondary Education, Report 1895; Sadler, Reports on 
Organization of Education in Liverpool, Sheffield, County of 
Essex, etc., etc., 1904-6, discuss current difficulties in Eng- 
land. Snedden, Vocational Education; Dean, The Worker and 
the State; Creasey, Continuation Schools; Jane Addams, 
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets; C. E. B. Russell, 
Manchester Boys; R. Bray, Boy Workers and Apprenticeship. 
On Universities — Newman, The Idea of a University (for the 
controversies of the 'forties) ; Paulsen, The German University 
and University Study. 

CHAPTER VIII.— Paulsen, History of Higher Education; 
Board of Education, various Reports of the Consultative 
Committee, 1906-12, also Memorandum on the Proposed Regis- 
tration Council, 1911; Meumann, Vorlesungen iiber Experi- 
mentelle Padagogik; Claparede, Experimental Pedagogy. For 
United States, publications bf the Bureau of Education (simi- 
lar volumes distributed freely for public information from 
m any State Departments of Education). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 

CHAPTER IX.— Dewey, The School and the Child; Here- 
ford, The Student's Froebel; Scott, Social Education; O'Shea, 
Dynamic Factor in Education; Holmes, What is and What 
might be. For Secondary School Pursuits — Norwood and Hope, 
Higher Education of Boys in England; Sara A. Burstall, English 
High Schools for Girls; also Memoranda of the Board of 
Education on the Teaching of English Literature and on Ele- 
mentary Mathematics. For Manual Instruction and House- 
craft, recent reports by the Board of Education under these 
titles are valuable. 

CHAPTER X. — Stanley, Life of Arnold, chaps, iii and iv; 
Jane Addams, and Russell and other references in chaps, v 
and vii; Holmes, as in chap, ix; Baden-Powell, Scouting for 
Boys; Tompkins, School Management. 

SHORT GENERAL LIST 

Encyclopedia Britannica, articles on Education and School, 
with many references. These chiefly treat of the history of 
Education: the essay on the history of educational ideas 
stops, however, with 1852. The Cyclopaedia of Education, 
now in course of issue in 7 vols., is comprehensive. The 
Teacher's Encyclopaedia deals chiefly with school practice. 
History. — (A) The most valuable reading in educational 
history is gained from writers who have not confined their 
attention to the school, but have surveyed an entire field of 
culture: of such works, Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renais- 
sance in Italy affords a good example, but an adequate list 
would carry us too far afield. (B) Of writers dealing chiefly 
with schools and education in the narrow sense, Munroe and 
Davidson, History of Education, are comprehensive text- 
books. Laurie, Woodward, Foster Watson, Adamson deal with 
various periods, especially of English education. Munroe 
gives elaborate Bibliographies for all periods. Principles 
and Theories of Education can best be treated by a similar 
division. (A) Most of the great writers on philosophy and 
life have made some definite contribution to education, and the 
student does well to read these at the source, beginning with 
Plato's Republic (Bosanquet is a useful introduction). The 



252 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

following may be noted: Locke, Thoughts concerning Educa- 
tion; Rousseau, Smile; Herbart (The Science of Education, 
etc., or Hayward, The Secret of Herbart); Herbert Spencer, 
Essays on Education; Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, The Crown of 
Wild Olive, and other volumes; the late W. James, Talks to 
Teachers; Tolstoi, various Essays. (B) Writers who were 
first and last teachers of children — Pestalozzi, Leonard and 
Gertrude, etc. (the biographies of Green, Holman, Compayre 
usually introduce him to English students); Froebel, The 
Student's Froebel, edited by Herford; Turing, Education and 
School; Farrar, Sidgwick and others, Essays on a Liberal 
Education, are examples. More recent contributions will be 
found above in the references given for the various chapters. 



INDEX 



ACLAND, ARTHTJB, 190 

Adaptation and adjustment, 10-15 

Adolescence. See Youth 

Animal instincts, 10-31 

Ann Arbor, State University, 121 

Apprenticeship, 36 

Arithmetic, for young children, 

199, 207, 216, 217 
Arnold, Thomas, quoted, 77; at 

Rugby, 234-236 
Arts, the origin of, 18; and the 

child, 207; in secondary schools, 

223. 226 
Attendance at school, 30, 123; 

compulsory, 165, 222; inferior 

limit, 197; superior limit, 164, 

220, 229 

Baden-Powell, General, 244 
Baltimore plan, 145 
Barnes, Earl, 93, 185 
Boarding-schools, English, 233 
Books and bookbinding, interest 

for children, 206 
Boys' Scout Movement, 244 
Browning, Robert, quoted, 74 
Bryce, James, 117; Commission 

139, 223 
Budget, the Education, 132 
Building, temporary school, 133 
Butler, N. M., quoted, 23, 24, 190 

Central authority, 115, 173, 174; 

as an instructor of the people, 

192-194. 
Character, a personal affair, 60 
Charity schools, 39 
Childhood, divided into periods, 

83 



253 



Child-labour, 89, 211 

Children and the moral life, 65 

Children's care, legislation for, 13 

Child study, 171, 184 

Church, as controlling education, 

38, 102-114 
Classical teaching, 52, 226 
Class unity, 240-243 
Clergy, as organizers of culture, 

34,38 
Cleveland, plan for backward schol- 
ars, 145 
Clinies, school, 70 
College, distinguished from school, 

81, 143, 157 
Compulsion. See Attendance 
Consultative Committee, 175 
Continuation classes, 162 
Convention, opposed to freedom, 

44, 50-61 
Correlation, 202 
Correspondence teaching, 162 
Council of teachers proposed, 172, 

175, 177 
Court, education in the, 35 
Cowper-Temple instruction, 112 
Craftsman, child or teacher as, 

183, 203 
Culture in Its beginnings, 18, 34; 

defined, 51; and the child, 212 
Curriculum, constantly added to, 

50; of schools, Chap. IX 
Custom and the young, 59 

Defectives, care of, 26, 95 
Democracy and modern children, 58 
Dewey, 59. 65, 196, 213, 243 
Differentiation of types of school, 
139-166; of teachsrn, 1S3 



254 



INDEX 



Discipline, 58-61, 212 

Drama, and the child, 205, 207, 212 

DrlU, period lor mental, 90, 207. 

215 
Drudgery and the child, 207, 212 
Dukes, Dr. Clement, 71 

Economic progress and schooling, 

27 
Education, definition, 9, 10, 17, 18, 

20, 21, 41 
Ethics and the school, 61-66, 228; 

and the teacher, 66, 188 
Eugenics, 11, 13, 16-18, 147, 148 
Examination system, 124 
Experience, 43 

Extension of period of infancy, 24 
of university teaching, 160 

Fairy tales, 86 

Family, and schooling, 33, 108; 

parents' evenings, 246 
Fatigue, in the period of stability, 

88 
Freedom, 50-61; for teachers, 61, 

179; in the time-table, 209 
Froebel, 197, 200 

Gardening, its interest for chil- 
dren, 204 
Geography, 205 

Girls' clubs, 164; schools, 166 note 
Grammar schools in England, 233 
Greek, ancient, in modern Europe, 
52. 53, 227 

Hall, Stanley, quoted, 75, 88, 93 
Handicrafts, 204, 224 
Helplessness, 22, 27, 30 
Herbart, 63 
History, 205, 214 

Holidays, needed by teachers, 182 
Holmes, E. G. A., 243 
Housecraft, its interest for chil- 
dren, 204, 211 
House-system, 237 

Ideals, origin, 20; as an end for 

schooling, 46-47 
Imperial service and the school, 

236 



Individual differences, 98 
Industry and the child. 207. 210, 

211 
Infant school. See Kindergarten 
Instinct, 10-31 

Jesus with little children, 52 
Jowett, influence on college educa- 
tion, 156 

Kerchenstelner, 93, 185 
Kindergarten, 140, 197-200 
King, Irving, quoted, 77, 81 
Kipling's animal psychology, 15 

Ladder, the educational, 135 

Lads' clubs, 164, 238 

Land, need of, for schools, 134 

Laurie,<63 

Leaving certificate systems, 124- 

131 
Leisured class, origin of, 28 
Library, education at Whitehall, 

191 
Linguistic studies, 216, 218, 223 
Literature, origins, 19; and the 

child, 206, 213, 225 
Local authorities, 115, 122 
Locke, 63, 253 
Luther, 40 

Macmlllan, Miss Margaret, 70 

Managers of schools, 117, 118 

Mathematics, 218, 223 

Medical inspection, 71 

Mill, John Stuart, in childhood, 

97,98 
Modern languages, 218, 224 
Moral ideas of children, 66, 93, 228 
Motive in children, 201-203, 212 
Mumford, Dr., 71 
Music, precocity in, 96; in schools, 

207, 224 

Office work laid on teachers, 176 

note 
Oxford, college education at, 156- 

158 

Parents. See Family 
Partial education, 162, 220 



INDEX 



255 



Perclval, Dr., his work at Clifton, 

237 
Pestalozzl, 57 

Physical training, 16, 70, 235 
Physics, In the secondary school, 

225 
Physiology for children, 54; for 

teachers, 188 
Play, defined, 86 
Playtime, of life. 86-88, 200: Its 

sequel, 205 
Pragmatism and the child, 205 
Precocity, 94, 143 
Preyer, 85 
Primary School curriculum, 200- 

218, 242 
Primitive man, compared to the 

child, 89 
Professional training extended, 24 
Progress, 47 

Promotion of gifted scholars, 144 
Psychology, genetic. Chap. V and 

pp. 185-187; experimental, 186; 

physiological, 186 
"Public Schools," 235-238 
Puritan clergy as teachers, 39 

Reading, the early stages, 201 

Rein, 63, 118 

Religion and the school, 34-41, 102- 

114 
Research In education, 189 
Rhodes, Cecil, scholarship scheme, 

169 
Rousseau, 57 

Rugby, under Arnold, 234 
Russell, C. E. A., 238 

Scholarship systems, 136 

School, earliest type of, 34; defini- 
tion, 41; purposes, 43-73; as a 
community, 119 

School building as a social centre, 
134 

Schooling defined, 11; contrasted 
with education, 22 

Science, in the curriculum, 54, 202, 
216 

Scott, Dr. Colin, 208 

Secondary schooling, struggle for, 
29; types of, 154. 219; curricu- 
lum, 219-228 



Selection, as affecting types of 

school, 146-150 
Service, domestic, by children, 92 
Settlement, school, 119 
Sidls, Professor, son of, 98 
Slaughter, J. W., quoted, 91 
Socialism and State schools, 72 
Society and man, 18; and the 

child, 208 and Chap. X 
Sociology and the teacher, 188 
Speech, as an agency in human 

progress, 15 
Spencer, Herbert, 53 
Stability, period of, 90-92 
Standards of satisfaction, 46-48 
State, a rival to the Church, 40; 

method of control in England, 

100, 114; responsible for research 

in education, 190 
Sunday schools, 162 note 
Supra-normal children, 94-99 
Symbols, 51-59, 202 

Teacher, origin of the office, 34, 37, 
40; as upholder of tradition, 52, 
60; servant of the community, 
63; his personal freedom, 64; his 
ethics, 66; his special field of 
study, 68 and Chap. VIII 

Technical education, origin, 32, 36 

Trades school, 153, 165 

Tradition, 47 

Training of teachers, 187-191 

Transition periods, 88, 200 

Undenominational systems, 110, 

112 
Universities, emancipation from 

the Church, 38; relation to the 

State, 121 
, distinctive functions, 157-162; 

controlling secondary schools, 

223 

Values, system of, 46; degeneracy, 
50; derived from elders, 55; but 
rejected, 56; during the period 
of youth, 79, 228 

Vocational education, 37, 151-155 

Wells, H. G., 40 

Wisconsin, State University, 160 



256 



INDEX 



Women, education of, 166 note 

Wordsworth, 87 

Work, exemption from, 28; denned, 

90; the child's attitude, 210-212 
Workshop in school, 203 
Writing, age for beginning, 199 and 

note 



Y.M.C. Associations, 162 note 

Young of animals, 22 

Youth, description of Its features; 
74-83, 235; later stage, 81; at 
school, 163. 220; choice of studies, 
226 



WAR 20 1912 



021 346 040 7 



